[Illustration: AS EL REY ROSE ON HIS HIND FEET WHIRLING, THAT UNWAVERINGMUZZLE WHIRLED ALSO TO KEEP IN LINE]

THARON OF LOST VALLEY

BY VINGIE E. ROE

Author of "The Maid of the Whispering Hills, ""The Heart of Night Wind, " etc. 

ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRANK TENNEY JOHNSON

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1919

Copyright, 1919

By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. 

CONTENTS

 CHAPTER PAGE I. The Gun Man's Heritage 1 II. The Horses of the Finger Marks 29 III. The Man in Uniform 52 IV. Unbroken Bread 76 V. The Working of the Law 102 VI. El Rey and Bolt 128 VII. The Shot in the Cañons 157 VIII. White Ellen 187 IX. Signal Fires in the Valley 214 X. The Untrue Firing Pin 247 XI. Finger Mark and Ironwood at Last 277

ILLUSTRATIONS

 PAGE

 As El Rey rose on his hind feet whirling, that unwavering muzzle whirled also to keep in line _Frontispiece_

 Near them sat a rider on a buckskin horse 38

 She talked with Conford who rode beside her and now and then she smiled 104

 In fact Courtrey, burning with the new desire that was beginning to obsess him, was working out a new design 131

THARON OF LOST VALLEY

CHAPTER I

THE GUN MAN'S HERITAGE

Lost Valley lay like a sparkling jewel, fashioned in perfection, castin the breast of the illimitable mountain country--and forever afterforgotten of God. 

A tiny world, arrogantly unconscious of any other, it lived its ownlife, went its own ways, had its own conceptions of law--and they werebased upon primeval instincts. 

Cattle by the thousand head ran on its level ranges, riders joggedalong its trail-less expanses, their broad hats pulled over theireyes, their six-guns at their hips. Corvan, its one town, ran itsnightly games, lined its familiar streets with swinging-dooredsaloons. 

Toward the west the Cañon Country loomed behind its sharp-facedcliffs, on the east the rolling ranges, dotted with oak anddigger-pine, went gradually up to the feet of the stupendous peaksthat cut the sapphire skies. 

Lost indeed, it was a paradise, a perfect place of peace but for itshumans. Through it ran the Broken Bend, coming in from the high andjumbled rocklands at the north, going out along the sheer cliffs atthe south. 

Out of its ideal loneliness there were but two known ways, and bothwere worth a man's best effort. Down the river one might drive a bandof cattle, bring in a loaded pack train, single file against the wall. That was a twelve days' trip. Up through the defiles at the west a manon foot might make it out, provided he knew each inch of the SecretWay that scaled False Ridge. 

It was spring, the time of greening ranges and the coming of newcalves. Soft winds dipped and wantoned with Lost Valley, in the CañonCountry shy flowers, waxen, heavy-headed on thin stems, clung to therugged walls. 

All day the sun had shone, mild as a lover, coaxing, promising. Thevery wine of life was a-pulse in the air. 

All day Tharon Last had sung about her work scouring the boards of thekitchen floor until they were soft and white as flax, helping oldAnita with the dinner for the men, seeing about the number of newpalings for the garden. She had swept every inch of the deep adobehouse, had fixed over the arrangement of Indian baskets on the mantel, had filled all the lamps with coal-oil. She was very careful with thelamps, trimming the wicks to smokeless perfection, for oil was scarceand precious in Lost Valley, as were all outside products, since theymust come in at long intervals and in small quantities. And as sheworked she sang, wild, wordless melodies in a natural voice as rich asa harp. That voice of Tharon's was one of the wonders of Lost Valley. Many a rider went by that way on the chance that he might catch itsgolden music adrift on the breeze, her father's men came up at nightto hear its martial stir, its tenderness, for the voice was the girl, and Tharon was an unknown quantity, sometimes all melting sweetness, sometimes fire that flashed and was still. 

So on this day she sang, since she was happy. Why, she did not know. Perhaps it was because of the six new puppies in the milk-house, rolling in awkward fatness against their shepherd mother, whose softeyes beamed up at the girl in beautiful pride. Perhaps it was becauseof the springtime in the air. 

At any rate she worked with all the will and pleasure of youth in acongenial task, and the roses of health bloomed in her cheeks. Thesun itself shone in her tawny hair where the curls made waves andripples, the blue skies of Lost Valley were faithfully reflected inher eyes. 

Her skin was soft-golden, the enchanting skin of some half-blondswhich can never be duplicated by all the arts of earth, and her fullmouth was scarlet as pomegranates. 

Sometimes old Anita who had raised her, would stop and look at her inwonder, so beautiful was she to old and faithful eyes. 

And not alone to Anita was she entirely lovely. 

There was not a full grown man in Lost Valley who would not go many amile to look upon her--with varying desires. Few voiced theirlongings, however, for Jim Last was notorious with his guns and couldprotect his daughter. He had protected her for twenty years, come fullsummer, and he asked no odds of any. His eyes were like Tharon's--blueand changing, with odd little lines that crinkled about them at thecorners, elongating them in appearance. He was a big man, vital andquiet. The girl took her stature from him. Her flashes of fire camefrom her mother, of whom she knew little and of whom Jim Last saidnothing. Once as a child she had asked him, after the manner ofchildren, about this mother of dim memories, and his eyes had hazedwith a look of suffering that scared her, he had struck his palm upona table, and said only:

"She was an angel straight out of Heaven. Don't ask me again. "

So Tharon had not asked again, though she had wondered much. 

Sometimes old Anita, become garrulous with age, mumbled in thetwilight when the rose and the lavendar lights swept down the easternramparts and across the rolling range lands, and the girl gleanedscattered pictures of a gentle and lovely creature who had come withher father out of a mystic country somewhere "below. "

"Below" meant down the river and beyond, an unnamable region. 

In the big living room there was one relic of this mysterious mother, a tiny melodeon, its rosewood case a trifle marred by unknownhardships, its ivory keys yellow with age. It had two small pedals andtwo slender sticks which fitted therein and pushed the bellows up anddown when one trampled upon them. And to Tharon this little oldinstrument was wealth of the Indies. The low piping of its reedy notesmade an accompaniment of surpassing sweetness when she sat before itand sang her wordless melodies. And just as she found music in herthroat without conscious effort, so she found it in her fingers, deep, resonant chords for her running minors, thin, trickling streams oflightness for her own slow notes. 

The sun had turned to the west in its majestic course and Tharon, thenoon work over, drew up the spindle-legged stool and sat down to playto herself and Anita. The old woman, half Mexic, half Indian, drowsedin a low chair by the eastern window, her toil-hard hands clasped inher lap, a black _reboso_ over her head, though the day was warm assummer. A kitten frisked in the sunlight at the open door, wild ducks, long domesticated, squalled raucously down the yards, some cattleslept in the huge corrals and the little world of Last's Holding wasat peace. It seemed that only the girl idling over the yellowed keys, was awake. 

For a long and happy hour Tharon sat so, sometimes opening her prettythroat in ambitious flights of sound, again humming lowly--and thatwas enchanting, as if one sang lullabies to flaxen heads onshoulders. 

And it did enchant one--a man who stood for the better part of thathour at the edge of the deep window in the adobe wall and watched thesinger. 

He was a splendid figure of a man, tall, broad, muscular, built forstrength and endurance. His face was unduly lined, even for his age, which was near fifty, but the eyes under the arched black brows werevital as a hawk's. He wore the customary garments of the Lost Valleymen, broad sombrero, flannel shirt, corduroys and cowboy boots, stitched and decorated above their high heels. At his hips hung twoguns, spurs clinked when he stepped unguardedly. He rarely steppedthat way, however. 

When presently the girl at the melodeon ceased and drew the lid overthe keys with reverent fingers, he moved silently back a pace or twoalong the wall. Then he waited. As he had anticipated, she came to thedoor to look upon the budding world, and for another moment he watchedher with a strange expression. Then he swung forward and let the spursrattle. Tharon flashed to face him like a startled animal. 

"Hello, Tharon, " he said and smiled. The girl stared at him with quickinsolence. 

"Howdy, " she said coldly. 

He came close to the doorway, put one hand on the facing, the other onhis hip and leaned near. She drew back. He reached out suddenly andgripped her wrist in fingers that bit like steel. 

"Pretty, " he said, while his dark eyes narrowed. 

Tharon flung her whole young strength against his grip with atwisting wrench and came free. The quick, tremendous effort left hercalm. And she did not retreat a step. 

"Hell, " said the man admiringly, "little wildcat!"

"What you want?" she asked sharply. 

"You, " he answered swiftly. 

"Buck Courtrey, " she said, "you might own an' run Lost Valley--all butone outfit. You ain't never run Last nor put your dirty hand on th'Holdin'. An' that ain't all. You never will. If you ever touch meagain, I'll tell Dad Jim an' he'll kill you. I'd a-told him beforewhen you met me that day on the range, only I didn't want his honesthands smutted up with such as you. He's had his killin's before--butthey was always in fair-an'-open. You he'd give no quarter--if he knewwhat you ben askin' me. "

The man's eyes narrowed evilly. They became calculating. 

"Tell him, " he said. 

"Eh?"

"Tell him. "

"You want to feed th' buzzards?" the girl asked with an insulting pealof laughter. 

"Not yet--but I'll remember that speech some day. "

"Remember an' be damned, " said Tharon. "Now kindly take your dirtycarcass off Last's Holding--back to your wife. "

The fire was flashing a little in her blue eyes as she spoke, and shehalf turned to enter the house. 

As she did so, Courtrey flung out an arm and caught her about theshoulders. He drew her against him with the motion and kissed hersquare on the lips. For a second his narrowed eyes were drunken. 

As he loosed her Tharon gasped like a swimmer sinking. 

She put up a hand and drew it across her mouth, which was pale asashes with sudden rage. 

"Now, " she said, "I'll tell him. "

"Do, " said Courtrey, and swung away around the wall of the house. 

There were no more artless songs that day at Last's Holding. Anita wasawake and peering with dim eyes when Tharon came in from the doorsill. 

"_Mi querida_, " she asked, "what happened?"

"Nothing, " said the girl, "it's time to begin supper. Th' boys'll soonbe comin' in. "

"_Si, si_, " said Anita, "I'll ask José to cut the fresh beef--it hashung long enough in the cooling house. "

Supper at Last's was a lively affair. At the long tables in theeating room the riders gathered, lean, tanned men, young mostly, allalert, quick-eyed, swift in judgment. Their days were full and earnestenough, running Last's cattle on the Lost Valley ranges. The eveningswere their own, and they made the most of them. The big house was freeto them, and they made it home, smoking, playing cards on the livingroom table under the hanging lamp, mulling over the work of the day, and begging Tharon to sing to them, sometimes with the instrument, sometimes sitting in the deep east window, when the moon shone, andthen they turned out the light and listened in adoring rapture. 

For Last's girl was the rose of the Valley, the one absolutelyunattainable woman, and they worshipped her accordingly. 

Not that she was aloof. Far from it. In her deep heart the whole bunchof boys had a place; singly and collectively. They were her privateproperty, and she would have been inordinately jealous of any one ofthem had he slipped allegiance. 

As the purple and crimson veils began to drape the eastern rampartswhere the forests thickened and swept up the slopes, these ridersbegan to come in across the range, driving the herds before them. Running cattle in Lost Valley was no child's play. Any small bunch ofcows left out at night was not there by dawn. Eternal vigilance wasthe price of safety, and then they were not always safe. Witness poorHarkness, a year ago shot in the back and left to die alone--his bandrun off in daylight. 

They had found him too late, pitifully propped against a stone, thecigarette, he had tried to light to comfort him, dead in his nervelesshand. Tharon had wept and wept for Harkness, for he had been a goodcomrade, open-hearted and merry. And deep in her soul she harboureddim longings for justice on his murderer--revenge, if you will. 

Tonight she thought of him, somehow, as she went about the supper workalong with Anita and José and pretty dark Paula. She stood a moment onthe broad stone at the kitchen door, a dish of butter from thespringhouse under the poplars in her hand, and watched Billy Brent andCurly bring in a bunch from up Long Meadow way. She thought how brightthe spotted cattle looked, how lithe and graceful the men, and thenher eyes lighted as they always did when she beheld the horses ofLast's Holding--the horses of the Finger Marks. 

Billy rode Redbuck, Curly Drumfire, and they were princes of a royalblood, albeit Nature's strain alone. Slim, spirited, wiry, eagerheads up, manes flying, bright hoofs flashing in the late sunlight, they came home to Last's after a long day's work, fresh as when theywent out at dawn. 

"Nothin' ever floors them, " Tharon said aloud to herself. "Wonderfulcreatures. "

She set the butter down on the rock at her feet, cupped her handsabout her lips and sent out a keen, clear call, two notes, one rising, one falling. It had a livening, compelling quality. 

Instantly Drumfire flung up his head and answered it with a ringingwhistle, though he did not lose a stride in the flying curve he wasperforming to head a stubborn yearling that refused in stiff-tailedarrogance to go into the corrals. 

The girl smiled and, stooping, picked up her dish and entered. 

It was late before the last straggler was in from the range. The boyswashed at the big sink on the porch, and were ready for the heartyfare that steamed in the lamp-lighted room. For the last hour Tharonhad been watching the eastern slopes for her father. 

"He's ridin' late, Anita, " she said anxiously as the men trooped inwith the usual jest and laughter. 

"He went far, no doubt, _Corazon, "_ said old Anita comfortably. "Hegoes so fast on El Rey that time as well as distance flies beneath theshining hoofs. "

Anita was like her people, mystic and soft-spoken. 

"True, " said the girl gently, "I forget, El Rey is mighty. He wentvery far I make no doubt. We'll hear him comin' soon. "

Then she poured steaming coffee in the cups about the table, smilingdown in the eyes upturned to hers. Billy, Curly, Bent Smith, JackMasters and Conford, the foreman, they all had a love-look for her, and the girl felt it like a circling guerdon. She was grateful for thesense of security that seemed to emanate from her father's riders, abit wistful withal, as if, for the first time in her life, she neededsomething more than she had always had. 

"Which way did Dad go, Billy?" she asked, "north or south?"

"North, " said Billy, "he rode th' Cup Rim range today. "

When the meal, a trifle silent in deference to Tharon's silence, wasdone, the men rose awkwardly. They stood a moment, looking about, undecided. 

Conford picked them up with his eyes and nodded out. He felt that justmaybe the girl would rather be alone. But Tharon stopped thereluctant egress. 

"Don't go, boys, " she said, "come on in th' room. There's no moontonight. " But she did not play on the melodeon. Instead she sat in thedeep window that looked over the rolling uplands and was quiet, listening. 

"Turn out th' light, Bent, " she said, "somehow I feel like shadowstonight. "

So they sat about in the great room, black with the darkness of thesoft spring night, and like the true worshippers they were, they didnot speak. Only the red butts of their cigarettes glowed and faded, toglow again and again fade out. Tharon sat curled in the window, hergraceful limbs drawn up to her chin, her eyes half closed, her keenears open like a forest creature's. She was listening for the markedrhythm of the great El Rey, the clap-clap, clap-clap of the king ofLast's Holding as he singlefooted down the hollow slopes of thelifting eastern range. 

And as she waited she thought of many things. Odd little happenings ofher childhood came back to her--the time she had caught her fatherkilling the winter's beef, had wept in hysterical pity and forbiddenhim to finish. 

They had had no meat those long months following--and she had so tiredof beans, that she had never been able to eat them since. She smiledin the dusk as she recalled Jim Last's life-long indulgence of her. 

And the time she had wanted to make her own knee-short dresses as longas Anita's, to sweep the floors, with fringe upon them and stripes ofbright print. 

She had worn them so--at twelve--until she found that they hinderedthe free use of her young limbs in mounting a horse, free-foot andbareback. Then, once again the memory of her father's face when shequestioned him concerning her mother. 

"Boys, " she said suddenly, smiling to herself, "did you ever know aman like my dad?"

There was a movement among the lounging riders, a shifting ofposition, a striking of cigarette ash. 

"No, sir, " said Billy promptly, "there hain't another man's good witha gun as him, not anywhere's in Lost Valley. Not even Buck Courtreyhimself. I'd back Jim Last against him, even, in fair-draw. Why?"

"Oh, nothin', " said the girl, "only--listen--Glory!" she added slippingdown from the window to stand quietly in the gloom, "that's him now! Iwas wishin' hard he'd come. Say--listen----Why, --there's somethin'gone wrong with El Rey's feet! 1--2----3, 4, 5, 6----1--2--Boys--he'sbreakin'! Th' king ain't singlefootin' right, for th' first timesince Jim Last put a halter on him! Come--come quick!"

Ordinarily Tharon was a bit slow in her movements, as the verygraceful often are. Now she was across the room to the western doorbefore a man had moved. They joined her there and she stood atattention, one hand at her breast, the breath held still in herthroat. The light, shining through from the eating room beyond, made ahalo of her tawny hair. Silently the riders grouped about her andlistened. 

Sure enough. Down along the range that rang as some open stretches do, there came the clip-clap of a hurrying horse, only now the hoof beatswere regular for a little space, to break, halt, start on, and againring true in the beautiful syncopation of the born singlefooter. Theking was coming home, but, alas! not as he had ever come before, infull flight, proud and powerful. He held his speed and sacrificed hiscertainty to the man who clung desperately to the saddle horn andswayed in wide arcs, so that he must shift continually to keep underhim. 

Into the dim glow of light at the open door came El Rey at last, greatblue-silver stallion, his big eyes shining like phosphorus, hisnostrils wide with horror of the pungent crimson wash that painted hisright shoulder. 

He stopped at the door-stone, his duty done. 

"Dad!" screamed Tharon, shrill as a bugle, for Jim Last, white anddull as a moon in fog, let go his desperate hold on the pommel andslid, deadweight, into the reaching arms that circled him. 

They carried him into the living room. Before they had him safely onthe wide couch where the Indian blankets glowed, Tharon, trembling butefficient, had lighted the hanging lamp above the table. 

Then she pushed the men aside and knelt beside him. 

"Dad, " she said clearly, "Jim! Jim Last!"

But the gaining of his goal had been too much. For a moment theflickering light in him died down to ashes. Tharon, her face as whiteas his own, waited in a man-like quiet. She held his stiffened handsand her eyes burned upon his features. With a deadly knowledge she wasprinting them indelibly upon her heart. 

Presently Jim Last sighed and opened his eyes. They sought hers and hesmiled, a tender lighting from within. He fumbled for the buckle ofhis gun-belt. The girl unclasped it and pulled it free. She noticedthat both guns were in their holsters. 

"Put it on, " whispered the master of Last's Holding. 

Without a question Tharon stood up and buckled the belt about herslender waist. 

Her father raising himself with difficulty on an elbow, wet his lips. 

"Tharon, my girl, " he said, "show your dad th' backhand flip. "

Strange play, this, when every second counted, but Last's daughterobeyed him to the letter. 

She stepped clear by the table, stood at attention a second, and, witha peculiar outward whirl, lightning-quick, of her two wrists, had himcovered with the big blue guns. 

He nodded. 

"Good as I learned ye, " he whispered, "make it better. "

"I will, " promised Tharon swiftly. 

The man closed his eyes, swayed, recovered as Conford caught him, andbrightened again. 

"Now th' under-sling. "

Again she obeyed, replacing the weapons, standing that secondat attention, and flipping them from the holsters so quicklythat the eye could scarcely catch the motion. Both draws werepeculiar--and peculiarly Last's own. "Good girl, " he said witha husk grown suddenly in his voice, "take--three hours--a day. I want t' leave you th' best gun-handler in Lost Valley--because, my girl--you'll--have--to--to--pro----"

He ceased, wilting forward in Conford's arms. 

Then he opened his eyes again for one last smile at the daughter hehad loved above all things on earth, save and except the memory of thewoman who had given her to him. 

For once in her life Tharon did not wait his finished speech. She sawthe Hand reach out of the shadows and flung herself upon his breastwhere the blood still seeped and fairly forced the last flutter oflife to brighten in him. She kissed his rugged cheek. 

"Who, Dad, " she called into his dulling senses, "tell me who? I'll gethim, so help me God!" and she loosed one hand to cross herself, as oldAnita had taught her. 

But the promise was late. None knew whether or not Jim Last heard it, for before the last word was done the breath had ceased in histhroat. 

Another twilight came down upon Lost Valley. The wide ranges lay dimand mysterious, grey and pink and lavendar, as if the hand of aMaster Painter had coloured them, as indeed it had. The Rockface atthe west was black with shadow for all its rugged miles, the easternuplands were bathed and aglow with purplish crimson light. 

In Corvan lights twinkled all up and down the one main street. Horseswere tied at the hitch-racks and among them were the Ironwoodsfrom Courtrey's Stronghold, beautiful big creatures, blood-bay, black-pointed, noticeable in any bunch. There were no Finger Marks, however, the blue roans, red roans and buckskins with the fourblack stripes on the outside of the knee, as if one had slapped themwith a tarred hand, which hailed from Last's. There were horsesfrom all up and down the Valley. Cow ponies and half-breeds of theIronwood stock which Courtrey would not keep at the Stronghold but wastoo close to kill, shouldered pintos from the Indian settlements, big, half-wild horses from over the mountains at the North. Insidethe brightly lighted saloons men passed back and forth, drank neatliquor at the worn bars, played at the green felt and canvascovered tables. At one, The Golden Cloud, more pretentious than therest, there foregathered the leading spirits of the Valley. HereCourtrey came and played and drank, his henchmen with him. He was inhigh mettle this night. Always a contained man, slow to laughterand to speech, he seemed to have unbent more than usual, to respondto the human nature about him. He was not playing steadily as washis wont. He took a turn at poker with three men from the south ofthe Valley where the river ran out of the Bottle Neck, won a handor two, threw down the cards and swung away to talk a moment withthis one, listen a moment where those two spoke of hushed matters. Always when he came near he was accorded deference. There wasnothing sacred from Courtrey of the Stronghold, seated like a feudalplace at the north head of Lost Valley, no conversation so privatethat he could not come in on it if he chose. 

For Courtrey was the king of the country, undisputed sovereign, thebest gun man north of the Rio Grand and south of the Line, if oneexcepted Jim Last. With him tonight were Black Bart, tall, swarthy, gimlet-eyed, a helf-breed Mexican, and Wylackie Bob his right-handman. Without these two he seldom moved. They were both ablelieutenants, experts with firearms. A formidable trio, the three wentwhere and when they listed, and few disputed their right-of-way. 

Courtrey, a smile in his dark eyes, the wide black hat at an angle onhis iron-grey hair, leaned against the high bar and scanned thecrowded room where the riders played and laughed and swore withabandon. 

"Heard anything more about Cañon Jim?" he asked Bullard, theproprietor of The Golden Cloud, "ain't come in yet?"

Bullard shook his head. 

"No--nor he won't, according to my notion. Think he mistook th' FalseRidge drop. Ain't no man could make it up again without th' hammerspike an' rope. "

"H'm--don't know. Don't know, " mused Courtrey. "I've always thought itcould be done. There ought to be a way on th' other side, seemslike. "

"Well, _ought_ an' _is_ is two diff'rent things, Buck, " grinnedBullard. 

"Sure, " nodded the king, "sure. An' yet--"

"Hello, Buck. "

A soft hand touched Courtrey's shoulder with a subtle caress. Hewheeled on the instant, ready, alert. Then he smiled and reaching up, took the hand and held it openly. 

"Hello, Lola, " he said, "how goes it?"

The newcomer was a woman, full, rounded, dark, and she was past-masterof men--as witness the slow glance that she turned interestedly outover the teeming room, even while the pulse in the wrist in Courtrey'sclasp leaped like a racer. She was a perfect specimen of a certaintype, beautiful after a resplendent fashion, full of eye and lip, confident, calm. She was brilliantly clad in crimson and black, andrings of value shone on her ivory-like hands. 

Lola of the Golden Cloud was known all over Lost Valley. Men who hadno women worshipped her--and some who had, also. At the Stronghold atthe Valley's head there was a woman who hated her, though she hadnever set eyes on her--Courtrey's wife. 

If Lola knew this she had never mentioned it, wise creature that shewas. Proud of her beauty and her power she had reigned at The GoldenCloud in supreme indifference, even to her men themselves, it seemed, though hidden undercurrents ran strong in her. Which way they tendedmany a reckless buck of Lost Valley would have given much to know, among them Courtrey himself. 

Now she pulled her hand away from him and sauntered over to a tablewhere five men sat playing, laid it upon the shoulder of one of them, leaned down and looked at the cards in his hand. 

The man, a tall stripling in a silver-studded belt, looked up, flattered. 

Courtrey by the bar watched her, still smiling. Then he turned backto Bullard and went on with his conversation. 

Over by the wall a man on a raised dais began to tune an ancientfiddle. 

Two more women came in from somewhere at the back, a big blooming girlby the name of Sadie, and a small red-head, tragically faded, withsoft brown eyes that should never have looked upon Bullard's. Two menrose and took them as the tune, an old-fashioned waltz, began toripple under the fingers of the fiddler, who was a born musician, andthe four swung down between the tables and the bar. The Golden Cloudwas in full swing, running free for the night, though the softtwilight was scarcely faded from the beautiful country without. 

Slip--step, slip--step--went the dancing feet to the accompaniment ofrattling spurs. These men were lithe and active, able to dance withamazing grace in chaps and the full accoutrement of the rider. Theyeven wore their broad brimmed hats. 

Why should they not, since none objected?

Bullard, solid, stocky, red-faced, leaned on his bar and watched thebusy room with pleased eyes. 

He did not hear a voice which called his name, once or twice, amongthe jumble of sounds. Presently an odd figure came round the end ofthe bar from a door that opened there into the mysterious backregions of the place and elbowed in to face him. 

This was a little old man, weazened and bent, his unkempt head thrustforward from hunched shoulders. He dragged two grain sacks behind him, and he was so grotesquely bow-legged that the first sight of himalways provoked laughter. This was old Pete the snow-packer, bound onhis nightly trip to the hills. Outside his burros waited, theirpack-saddles empty. 

By dawn they would come down from the world's rim, the grain sacksbulging with hard-packed snow for the cooling of Bullard's liquor. 

"Dick, " he said when he faced his employer, "here 'tis time t' startan' there ain't a damned bit o' grub put up fer me! Ef ye don't makethat pig-tailed Chink pay 'tention t' my wants, I quit! I quit, I tellye!"

And he emphasized his vehement protest by whirling the bags over hishead and flailing them upon the floor. 

A roar of laughter greeted him, which brought dim tears of indignationto his old eyes. 

"Ye don't care a damn!" he whimpered in impotent rage. "Jes' 'causeit's me. Ef 'twas yer ol' Chink, now--if 'twas him, th' ol'he-pigtail, ye'd----"

"Hold on, Pete, " said Bullard, slapping an indulgent hand on thegrotesque shoulder, "You go tell Wan Lee that if he don't put up th'best lunch in camp for you, an' _muy pronto_ at that, I'll come in an'skin him alive. Tell him----"

But Bullard was never to finish that sentence. 

There was a sound of running horses stopping square at the rackwithout, the rattle of chains, the creak of saddles. 

Booted feet struck the boards of the porch, and almost upon theinstant the great iron door of The Golden Cloud swung inward. 

The dancers stopped in their stride, the players laid down theircards, the noise of the room ceased with the suddenness thatcharacterized the time and place, for Lost Valley was quick upon thetrigger, tragedy often swept in upon hilarity. 

In the opening stood Tharon Last, her blue eyes black and sparkling, her tawny skin cream white, her lips tight-set and pale. She wore aplain dark dress that buttoned up the front, and at her hips therehung her father's famous guns. Her two hands rested on their butts. 

Behind her head against the starlight there was the dim suggestion ofmassed sombreros. 

For a moment she stood so in breathless silence, scanning the room. 

Then her glance came to rest on the face of Buck Courtrey. 

"Men, " she said clearly, "we buried Jim Last today. El Rey brought himhome last night--finished. You all know he was a gun man--th' best inthese parts. It was no gun man that killed him, in fair-an'-open, forhe was shot in th' back. It was a skunk, a coyote, a son-of-th'-devil, an' I'm goin' to kill him. "

At the last word there was a lightning movement at the bar asCourtrey's hand flashed at his hip, a flash of fire, a shot that wenthigh and lodged in the deep beam above the door, for the weazened formof the snow-packer had leaped up against him in the same instant. 

The girl had not moved. Her hands still rested on the guns in theirholsters. Now a grim smile curled her mouth, but her eyes did notlaugh. 

"I'm a-goin' t' kill him, " she said quietly, still in that clearvoice, "but I'll do it accordin' to th' law Jim Last laid down to meall my life--in certainty. I know--but I'll prove. We hain't noassassins, Jim Last an' me. Some day I'll draw--an' my father's killermust beat me to it. "

Without another word Tharon backed out on the porch, the door swung toat the pull of an unseen hand on the iron strap by the hinge. 

There was again the rattle and creak, the whirl of hoofs, and in thebreathless stillness that lasted for a few seconds, there came to thestrained ears in the Golden Cloud the clip-clap of a singlefooter asthe great El Rey led out of town. 

Then Buck Courtrey, flushed and unsmiling, sent his coldly narrowedeyes over the crowded room, man by man. Laughter came, a triflecracked and forced, cards slapped on the tables, chairs creaked as theplayers drew up again, the dancers swung into step as the fiddle tookup its interrupted strain. 

Only Lola, over by the door, looked for a pregnant moment atCourtrey's face, and shut her lips in a hard, straight line. 

Then, lastly, the cold eyes of the king came down to rest upon theweazened figure of the snow-packer busily engaged in rolling up hissacks for departure. If the strange old creature knew and felt theirpromise, he gave no sign as he trundled himself outdoors on his bandylegs. 

"Skunks, " said Old Pete, as he fumbled with his straps about thepatient burros, "are plumb pizen t' pure flesh. "

CHAPTER II

THE HORSES OF THE FINGER MARKS

At Last's Holding a change had taken place. The sun of spring stillshone as brightly, the work of the place went on as usual. The riderswent at dawn and came at dusk, their herds lowing across the rollinggreen spaces, the days were as busy as they had ever been, but itseemed as if Last's waited for something that would never happen, forsome one who would never come. Conford, quiet, forceful, businesslike, carried on the work without a ripple. To a casual eye all things wereas they had been. But to the keen eyes in the tanned faces of Last'sriders the change was appallingly apparent. They saw it creep day byday into their lives, felt it in the very atmosphere, and it was grimand promising. 

Old Anita felt it and watched with dim and wistful eyes. Pretty youngPaula from the Pomo Indian settlement far to the north of the Valleyunder the Rockface felt it and was more silent, cat-like of step thanever. José, always full of laughter at his outside work, was sobered. 

For this change was not material, but spiritual, and it had to do withTharon, who was now the mistress of Last's. 

She no longer sang her wordless songs, no longer played for hours onthe little old melodeon by the western door. Something had gone fromthe brightness of her face, a shadow had come instead. She was just asswift and gentle in her care for all the things of every day, asefficient and painstaking, but she did not laugh, and the tiny linesthat had characterized her father's blue eyes, began to showdistinctly about her own. 

They began to take on the look of great distances, as if she gazedfar. 

And for exactly three hours each day there could be heard themonotonous bark-bark-bark of the big guns Jim Last had given her inhis final hour. To Billy Brent there was something terrible in this. Bred to violence and the quick disasters of the country as he was, hecould not reconcile this grim practice with Tharon Last, the sane andloving girl who could not bear the sight of suffering. 

"I tell you, Curly, " he complained to his friend of nights when theycame in and lounged in the soft dusk by the bunk-house, "it'sunnatural. Not that I don't pay full respect to Jim Last's memory, an' him th' best man in all this hell-bent Valley, but it ain't rightan' natural fer no woman t' do what she's doin'. Ain't she Jim Last'sown daughter already with th' guns? Sure. Can drive a nail nigh as faras he could. Quick as Wylackie Bob on th' draw an' as certain, now. Then why must she keep it up?"

Curly, more silent in his ways but given to thought, studied the starsthat rode the darkening heavens and shook his head. 

"Let her alone, " he said once, "it was Last's command, an' he knewwhat he was about even if he was toppin' th' rise of the Big Divide. 

"He said 'you'll have to pro--'--you rec'lect? He meant _protect_ an'unless I miss my guess, Billy, he'd have added '_yourself_' if th'hand of Ol' Man Death hadn't stopped his words. Somethin' happened outthere in th' Cup Rim that day when Last got his that had to do withTharon, an' he knew she'd be in danger. Let her alone. "

So Billy let her alone, as did the rest. She went her ways, saw to thegarden and made the butter in the cool springhouse, and sat in thewindow seat in the twilights. She liked to have the men come in asusual, but the talk these times was desultory, failing and brighteningwith forced topics, to fail again and drop into silence while the dimred lights of the smokers glowed in the shadows. 

Time and again she stirred and sighed, and they knew that once againshe waited for Jim Last, listened for the clip-clap of El Rey cominghome along the sounding ranges. 

Once, on a night when there was no moon and the tree-toads sang in thecottonwoods by the spring, the girl, sitting so in the familiarwindow, suddenly dropped her head on her knees and sobbed sharply inthe silence. 

"Never again!" she said thickly from the folds of her denim skirt, "I'll never see him comin' home again!"

The riders stirred. Sympathy ached in their hearts, but not a man hadspeech to comfort her. It was Billy, the impulsive, who reached a handto her shoulder and gripped it hard. Tharon reached up and touched thehand in gratitude. 

It was about this time, when the master of Last's Holding had lain amonth beneath the staring mound under the pine tree out to the eastwhere they had buried Harkness, that José finished a work of art. Formany days he had laboured secretly in a calf-shed out behind the smallcorrals, and in his slim dark fingers there was beauty unleashed. Finest carving he knew, since his forbears, peons across the Border, had spent their lives upon the beams of the Missions. None had taughtJosé. It was in his blood. Therefore, from a block of the hard greystone of the region, which was almost like granite, he fashioned across, as tall as Tharon herself, struck it out freehand and true, andset upon its austere face fine tracery of vines and Jim Last's name. He took into the secret Billy and Curly, since these two he was sureof, and together they hauled the huge thing out and set it up. 

When Tharon, looking to the east with dawn, as was her habit, beheldthis silent tribute to the man she had so loved, she leaned herforehead against the deep window-case and wept from the depths. 

Then she went out to see it and with a knife she set her own markthereon--a tiny cross scratched in the headpiece, another in the armthat stretched toward all that was mortal of poor Harkness. 

"Two, " she said, dry-eyed, while the glorious dawn shot up to bathethe world in glory, "full pay for you both. "

 * * * * *

El Rey, stamping in his own corral, lifted his beautiful head, scannedthe wide reaches that spread away in living green, and tossing up hismuzzle, sent out on the silence a ringing call. He cocked his silverears and listened. No clear-cut human whistle answered him. Once morehe called and listened. 

Then he lowered his head and stepped along the fence. His great body, shining like blue satin with a silver frost upon it, gave and liftedwith every step. The pastern joints above his striped hoofs wereresilient as pliant springs. The muscles rippled in his shoulders, theblue-white cascade of his silver tail flowed to his heels, his manewas like a cloud upon the arch of his neck. He was strength and beautyincarnate, a monster machine of living might. 

Unrest was upon him. Life had become stagnant, a tasteless thing. Hewas keen for the open stretches, honing to be gone down the wind. Hefretted and ate out his heart for the freedom of the range. Old Anita, passing at some work or other, stopped and gazed at him for acompassionate moment. 

"You, too, _grande caballo_, " she said, "there is naught but grief atLast's Holding. _Tharone querida_" she called into the house, "comehere. "

Tharon came and stood in the kitchen door. 

"What, Anita?" she asked gently. 

"El Rey, " answered the old woman, "he calls and calls and none come tohim. He, too, needs help, _Corazon_. Why not take him for a run alongthe plain? It will help you both. "

For a long time the girl stood, considering. 

"I have not cared to ride lately, Anita, " she said, "but you areright. El Rey should not be left to fret. "

She stepped back in the house, then came out, and she had addednothing to her attire save her daddy's belt and guns. Without theseshe never left the Holding now. 

Bareheaded, slender, she was a thing of beauty, and there was a quietcommand about her which subdued the great El Rey himself, the proudesthorse in all the Valley, outside of Courtrey's Ironwoods, Bolt andArrow. 

Between these three horses there was much comment and discussion, though they had never been tested out together. 

She found a bridle on a corral post, a strong affair of rawhide, heavily ornamented with silver, its bit a Spanish spade. Without thisshe could not hold the stallion, and he was no pet to come at hercaressing call of the double notes. 

Only Jim Last himself had ever tamed El Rey to do his bidding by wordof mouth. The horse had had one master. He would never have another. 

Even now, when Tharon bridled him and opened the big gate, promisinghim his long-desired flight, he seemed not to see her, his beautifulbig eyes looked through, beyond her, as if he sought another. Therewas some one for whom he waited, listened. 

From a block of wood set in the yard the girl gathered the rein tightin her hand, balanced a moment, and leaped up astride the shiningback. 

With a snort like a pistol shot El Rey flung up his great head, leapedinto the air and was gone. Around the corner of the adobe house hewent, out across the trampled yard, and away along the open to thesouth, running level and free. With the first sink-and-lift Tharon hadslipped back a full span. Now she wound her fingers in the white cloudof mane that flailed her face and edged up, inch by inch. When herknees were well up on the huge shoulders that worked beneath thempowerfully, she gathered the reins, one in each hand, leaned downalong the outstretched neck and let the great king run. The wind sangby her ears in a rising whine, the green prairie was a flowing seabeneath her, the thunder of the pounding hoofs was stupendous music. Tharon shut her eyes and rode, and for the first time since Jim Last'sdeath a sense of joy rose in her like a tide. 

She had ridden El Rey before, many times. She had felt him sailbeneath her down the open prairies and always it was so, as if theearth slid by, as if the note of the wind lifted minute by minute. Shehad wondered often about this--how long it would continue to rise withEl Rey's rising speed, how long before he would reach a maximum abovewhich he could not go, a place where the singing note would remainfixed. 

She had never known him reach that point. Always he could go faster. Always he had reserves. 

Far out ahead she saw a bunch of cattle feeding. They were lazilycircling in a wide arc, content under the beaming sun. Near them sat arider on a buckskin horse, Bent Smith on Golden. This Golden was oneof the prides of Last's Holding. Bigger than Drumfire or Redbuck, heranked next to El Rey himself in speed, for his slim legs, slappedsmartly with the distinguishing finger marks on the outside of theknee, were long and shapely, his back short-coupled and strong, hiswithers low, his narrow hips high. Tharon bore hard on El Rey's bit, leaned her body to the left, and they swung in toward Bent and Goldenin a beautiful sweeping curve that brought the cowboy up in hisstirrups with his hat a-wave above him. 

"Good girl!" he yelled with leaping gladness as the superb pair shotby. "Good girl! Go to it!"

Tharon loosed a hand long enough to wave back and was gone, on downthe sloping land toward the country of the Black Coulee, her darkskirts fluttering at her knees, the two heavy guns pounding her thighsat every jump. 

It was a long time before El Rey came down from his sweeping flight. 

He had been too long holden in cramping bars. The free winds and therolling earth filled him with a sort of madness. He ran with joy andthe surety of unbounded power. 

The rider, left far behind, watched them anxiously for a time, thoughtof following, glanced at his cattle, remembered the gun man's heritageand turned to his business. 

The sun was well down over the western Rockface when Tharon and El Reycame back to Last's Holding. The riders were bringing in the cattle, dust was rising in clouds above the moving masses. From the ranchhouse came the savory smells of cooking. 

[Illustration: NEAR THEM SAT A RIDER ON A BUCKSKIN HORSE]

The stallion was limber as a willow. He tossed his handsome head andhis eyes were bright as stars set in his silver face. Life was at hightide in him, flowing magnificently. Tharon, her cheeks whipped intopulsing colour by the wind and the bounding speed, her tawny maneloosed from its bands and flying in a cloud behind her, smoothed backfrom her face, looked wild as an Indian. As she drew up and satwatching the work of the evening, she smiled for the first time inmany days, and Jack Masters, passing, felt his heart leap withgladness. 

When the mistress of Last's was sad, so were her people. 

When the last big corral gate had swung to and the boys turned in tounsaddle, she touched El Rey with a toe and went over among them. 

"Line up the horses, boys, " she said, "I want to see them all togetheronce more. Somethin' came back in me today--somethin' I been missingfor a long time. I'll be myself again. "

Billy turned Redbuck to face her, dropped his rein. Curly rode up onDrumfire. These two were red roans, dead matches. Bent brought Goldenand stood him alongside. From far at the back of the corral theycalled Conford and Jack, who came wondering, the former on Sweetheart, true sister of El Rey, almost as big, almost as fast, almost asbeautiful. 

Silver-blue roan, silver-pointed, slim, graceful, springy, she had nota single dark spot on her except the sharp black bars of the fingermarks outside her knees. 

"You darlin'!" said Tharon as she wheeled in line. 

Then came Jack on Westwind, and he was another buckskin, paler thanGolden, most marvelously pointed in pure chestnut brown. His fingermarks were brown instead of black--the only horse at the Holding sodistinguished, for no matter of what shade or colour, in all theothers these peculiar marks were jet black. Five splendid creaturesthey stood and pounded the ringing earth, tossed their heads andwaited, though they had all been far that day and it was feedingtime. 

Out in the horse corrals there were many more of their breed, slim, wiry horses, toughened and hardened by long hours and daily work, butthese were the flower of Last's, the prized favourites. 

For a long time Tharon sat and watched them, noting their perfectcondition, their glistening skins, their shining hoofs, many of whichwere striped, another characteristic. 

"I don't believe, " she said at last, "that there's a bunch of horsesin Lost Valley to come nigh 'em. Ironwoods or anything else--I'd backth' Finger Marks. "

"So would we, " said Conford quietly, "though we've seen th' Ironwoodsrun--a little. "

"That's th' word, Burt, " said Curly, "a little. Who of us has everseen Courtrey let Bolt run like he wanted to? Not a darned one. I'veseen that big bay devil pull till th' blood dripped from his mouth. "

"Sure, " put in Masters, "I've seen that, too--but I was lyin' up onth' Cup Rim oncet, watchin' a couple mavericks fer funny work, an'Courtrey an' Wylackie Bob come along down that way on Bolt an'Arrow--an' they wasn't a-holdin' them then. Lord, Lord, how they wasgoin'! Two long red streaks as level as your hand, an' I swear myheart came up in my throat to see 'em, an' I almost hollered. It waspretty work--pretty work, an' no mistake. "

Tharon looked over at him. 

"Fast as El Rey, Jack?"

"Who could tell?" said the man. "I know it was some speed, an' that isall. "

The girl struck a hand on the king's shoulder so passionately that hejumped and snorted. 

"Some day, " she said tensely, "El Rey will run th' Ironwoods off theirfeet--an' I'll run th' heart out of their master, damn him! Put th'horses out. It's supper time. "

She threw her right limb over the stallion's neck swiftly and withlithe grace, and slid abruptly to the ground. 

As she did so there came the sound of hoofs on the hard earth at thecorner of the house, and a stranger came sharply into sight. 

He drew up and nodded. Conford, just turning away, turned quickly backand came forward. 

"Howdy, " he said. 

The man, tall, lean, dark, returned the salute with another nod. 

He was covered with dust, as if he had ridden far and been a long timecoming. His clothes were much the worse for wear, but they were mostlyleather, which takes wear standing, as it were. The wide hat pulledlow over his piercing dark eyes, was ornamented with a vanity ofsilver. 

The riding cuffs at his wrists were studded profusely with the samemetal, as was the wide belt that spanned his narrow waist. 

He wore a three days' beard, and a black moustache dropped its longpoints to the edge of his jaw. Black hair showed beneath the hat. Hewas a remarkable figure, even in Lost Valley, and he commandedattention. 

He carried the customary two guns of the country, and he bestrode ahorse that was as noticeable as himself. 

This horse was no denizen of Lost Valley. It was an utter alien. Itscolour was a dingy black, as if it had recently been through fire, itscoat rough and unkempt. Its long head was heavy and slug-like, itsnose of the type known among horsemen as Roman. It was roughly built, raw-boned and angular, and of so stupendous a size that the man atop, who was six foot tall himself, seemed small by comparison. 

However, for all its ugliness, it possessed a seeming of vast power, asuggestion of great strength. 

The stranger looked the group over with his keen, hard eyes, and spokein a slow drawl. 

"I reckon, " he said, "I'm a-ridin' th' wrong trail. I hain't expectedhyar. "

And turning abruptly, without another word, he jogged away around thehouse and started down the long slope already greying with the comingnight. 

The foreman and the five punchers clamped over to the corner of thekitchen and watched him in speculative silence. Tharon came along andstood by Billy, her hand on the boy's arm. To Billy that sober touchconfused the distances, set the strange rider dancing on the slope. 

"H'm, " said Conford, his grey eyes narrow, "come from far an's goin'somewheres. I'll watch that duck. He looks like he's a record man tome. "

At supper there was much speculation about the stranger. 

"I'll lay a month's pay he come from Texas, " said Billy, casting aside glance at his pal Curly, "them long lankys usually do. An'somehow it shows in their eyes, sort o' fierce an'--"

"Billy, " said Tharon severely, "if I was Curly I'd take a fall out ofyou. He can do it, _you_ know that an' _I_ know it. "

"Thanks, Miss Tharon, " said Curly in his soft Southern drawl, "if youfeel that-a-way about it, w'y, I don't care what _no_ littleyellow-headed whipper-snapper from up Wyomin' way says to th'contrary. "

Billy was a bit abashed, but he stubbornly supported his contentionthat the stranger was a bad-man from Texas. 

"Plenty bad-men right here in Lost Valley, " said the girl quietly, "an' th' breed ain't dyin' out as I can see. Th' settlers need a newleader--now that Jim Last's gone. " And she fell to playing absentlywith her fork upon the cloth. 

The boys changed the subject hurriedly. 

"I found a dead brandin' fire in th' Cup Rim yesterday, Burt, " saidMasters, "quite a scrabbled space around it. Looked like some one'dbranded several calves. "

"Don't doubt it, " said the foreman. "Careful as we are there's alwayslikely to be stragglers. An' to be a straggler's to be a goner inthis man's land. "

"Unless he belongs t' Last's, " said the irrepressible Billy. "I'll laythat fer every calf branded by Courtrey's gang we'll get back two. "

"Billy, " said Tharon again, "Jim Last wasn't a thief. Neither will hispeople be thieves. For every calf branded by Courtrey, _one calf_wearin' th' J. L. --an' one calf only. We don't steal, but we won'tlose. "

"You bet your boots an' spurs throwed in, we won't, " said the boyfervently. 

As they rose from the table with all the racket of out-door men therecame once more the sound of a horse's hoofs on the hard earthoutside. 

Last's Holding was a vast sounding-board. No one on horseback couldcome near without advertising his arrival far ahead. 

This time it was no stranger. Tharon went to the western door to bidhim 'light. 

It was John Dement from down at the Rolling Cove. He was a thin, wornman, who looked ten years beyond his forty, his face wrinkled by theconstant fret and worry of the constant loser. 

Tonight he was strung up like a wire. His voice shook when he returnedthe hearty greetings that met him. 

"Boys, " he said abruptly, "an' Tharon--I come t' tell ye allgood-bye. "

"Good-bye! John, what you mean?"

Tharon went forward and put a hand on his arm. Her blue eyes searchedhis face. 

The man stood by his horse and struck a tragic fist in a hard palm. 

"That's it. I give up. I'm done. I'm goin' down the wall come day--mean' my woman an' th' two boys. Got our duffle ready packed, an' Lordknows, it ain't enough t' heft th' horses. After five year!"

There was the sound of the hopeless tears of masculine failure in theman's tragic voice. His fingers twisted his flabby hat. 

"Hold up, " said Conford, pushing nearer, "straighten out a bit, Dement. Now, tell us what's up. "

"Th' last head--th' last hoof--run off last night as we was comin' inwith 'em a leetle mite late. Had ben up Black Coulee way, an' it gotdark on us. Just as we got abreast o' th' mouth of th' Coulee, whereth' poplars grow, three men come a-boilin' out. They was on fasthorses--o' course--an' right into th' bunch they went, hell-bent. Stampeded the hull lot. You know my bunch'd got down t' about ahundred head--don't know what I ben a-hangin' on fer, only a manhates t' give up an' own hisself beat out. An' my woman--she's afighter. 

"She kep' standin' at my back like, oh, like--well, she kep' a-sayin''We'll win out yet, John, you see. Right'll win ev'ry time. ' You seewe are just ready to get th' patent on our land. She couldn't givethat up, seems like. All this time gone an' nothin' gained. So we bena-hangin' on when things went from bad to worse. Th' herd's beena-goin' down an' down. Calves with their tongues slit so's they'd losetheir mothers--fed up in some coulee by hand an' branded. Knowed 'emby my own colour cattle, w'ich I drove in here five year ago--th'yellers. 

"Mothers killed outright an' th' calves branded. Oh, I know itall--but what could I do? Kep' gettin' poorer an' poorer. Couldn'tafford enough riders t' protect 'em. Then couldn't afford any an'tried t' make it go as th' boys got older. Courtrey, damn him, wantsme offen that piece o' land a-fore th' patent's granted. Him with histwenty thousan' acres of Lost Valley now! An' how'd he get it? Falseentry, that's what! How many men's come in here, took up land, 'soldout' to Courtrey an' went? Or didn't go. A lot of 'em _didn't go_. Weall know that. An' who dares to speak in a whisper about it? Th' menthat did wouldn't go--never--nowheres. "

There was the bitterness of utter defeat and hatred in the shakingvoice. The tree-toads, beginning their nightly chorus from the wetplaces below the cottonwoods, emphasized the dreariness of therecital, the ancient hopelessness of the weak beneath the heel of theoppressor. 

Dement ceased speaking and stood in silhouette against the lastyellow-and-black of the dead sunset. The protruding apple in hishawk-like throat worked up and down grotesquely. 

For a long moment there was utter silence. 

Then he began again. 

"I knowed I wasn't welcome in th' Valley when I hadn't ben here more'nsix months. Th' first leetle string o' fence I put up fer corrals wentdown, mysterious, as fast as I could fix it. Th' woman's garden wasbroke open an' trampled to dust by cattle, drove in. Winter ketched uswith mighty leetle t' eat in th' way o' truck. Next year she guardedit herself some nights, sleepin' by day, an' oncet she took a shot atsome one that come prowlin' around. They let her fence alone afterthat, but what'd they do outside? Killed all th' hogs we had one nightan' piled 'em in a heap in th' front door yard! That was hint enough, but I kep' a-thinkin' that ef we behaved decent like, an' minded ourown business we sartainly must win out. We did, " he added grimly aftera little pause, "like hell. An' how many others of th' settlers hasgone through th' like? We ain't no tin gods ourselves, I own, but wegot t' fight fire with fire. Only I ain't got no more light-wood, " hefinished quaintly, "I got to quit. "

There was another silence while the tree-toads sang. Then the man heldout his hand, hardened and warped with the unceasing toil of thosetragic years. 

"Good-bye, Tharon, " he said, "I wisht Jim Last was here. With him goneLost Valley's in Courtrey's hand an' no mistake. He was th' only mandared face him an' hold his own. Last's was th' only head th' weakerfaction had, its master their only leader. While he lived we had someshow, us leetle fellers. Now there ain't no leader. Th' ranchers'll goout fast now. It'll be a one-man valley. "

In the soft darkness Tharon took the extended hand, held it a momentand laid her other one upon it. 

"John Dement, " she quietly said, "I want you to go home an' bar yourhouse for fight. Fix up your fences, unpack your duffle. In themorning my riders will drive down to your place a hundred head o'cattle. You put your brand on em. There's goin' to be no one-mandoin's in Lost Valley yet awhile--not while Jim Last's daughterlives. See, " she dropped his hand and pointed to the east where thetall pine lifted to the stars, "out yonder there's a cross at JimLast's grave--an' there's my mark on it. Th' settlers have a leaderstill--an' I name myself that leader. I'm set against Courtrey, nowan' forever. I mean to fight him t' th' last inch o' ground in LostValley, th' last word o' law, th' last drop o' blood, both his an'mine. You go down among 'em--th' settlers--an' take 'em that word fromme. Tell 'em Jim Last's daughter stands facin' Courtrey, an' she'llneed at her back t' fight him every man in Lost Valley that ain't acoward. "

When the settler had gone, incoherent and half-incredulous, Conforddrew a long breath and looked at his mistress in the dusk. 

"Tharon, dear, " he said so gently that his words were like a caress"you're jest a-breakin' your riders' hearts. You're heapin' anxiety onus mountain-high. Now what on earth'll we do?"

Young Billy Brent pushed near and slapped a hand against a doubledfist. His eyes were sparkling like harbour lights, his voice was likethe sound of running fire. 

"Do?" he cried. "Do? We'll stand behind her so tight they can't seedaylight through, an' we'll fight with an' for her every inch o' thatway, every word o' that law, every drop o' that blood! Who saysLast's ain't on th' map in Lost Valley?" Tharon smiled and touched himagain. 

"Billy, " she said softly, "you're after my own heart. Now get to bed. I want t' think. "

CHAPTER III

THE MAN IN UNIFORM

Spring was warming swiftly into summer. Where the gently slopingranges went up in waves and swells toward the uplands at the east, thebright new green had turned to a darker shade. The tiny purple andwhite flowers had disappeared to give place to sturdier ones ofcrimson and gold. The veil of water that fell sharply down the face ofthe Wall for a thousand feet at the Valley's southern end had thinnedto sheerest gauze. In the Cañon Country the snow had disappeared frommost of the high points. Red, black, yellow, the great face of theencircling Wall stood in everlasting majesty, looking down upon thelevel cup of Lost Valley. The unspeakable upheaval of peaks and crags, of cañons and splits and unfathomable depths, was almost a sealed bookto the denizens of the Valley. There were those who knew False Ridge. 

There were those who said they knew more. Many a man had adventuredtherein, and few had returned to tell of their adventures. Cañon Jimhad not returned. Not that he was a loss to the community, or thatthey mourned him, but his absence pointed again to the formidablesecretive power of the Cañon Country. 

Tharon Last, standing in her western door, could look across theValley's deceptive miles and see the huge black seams and fissuresthat rent the grim face. These splits and cañons were peculiar in thatnone came down to the Valley's floor, their yawning doorways being, inevery instance, set from two hundred to five hundred feet up theWall. 

Often the girl watched them in the changing lights and her active mindformed many a conjecture concerning them. 

"Some day, " she told young Paula, "I'll go into the Cañon Country andsee it for myself. "

"Saints forbid, Señorita!" said Paula, who had no love for themysterious, and who was more Mexic than Porno, "there are demons anddevils there!"

"Yes, I doubt not, Paula, " said Tharon grimly. "They say Courtreyknows th' Cañons, an' when he's there, it's peopled, an' no mistake!

"But it must be beautiful--beautiful! Why--there's a thousand feet ofcrevasse on every hand, I know, steps an' benches an' weathered facesthat no man can climb. They say there's bright waters that tumbledown like th' Vestal's Veil and sink into holes without an outlet. Just go away in the rock. There's strange flowers an' stunted trees. An' they tell of th' Cup of God, a hidden glade so beautiful that th'eye of man has never seen its like. All my life it's called me, th'Cañon Country. 

"Don't you believe, Paula, that there's somethin' there for me? Somereason why I know I must some day go into its heart an' give myself upto it for a time? If I was free, " she finished with a sigh, "if I wasmy own woman, wholly, I'd go soon. There's rest an' peace up there, Iknow--and a place to think of Jim Last without such bitterness that myheart turns t' gall. "

She shook her bright head against the doorpost and shut her soft lipsinto a straight line. 

"Nope, " she finished sadly, "I ain't my own woman yet. "

 * * * * *

"Tharon, " said Billy Brent this day, clanking around the corner of theadobe house, his leather chaps flapping with every step, his yellowhair curling boyishly under his hat-brim. "Tharon, I got bad news foryou. "

There was genuine distress in his grey eyes. 

"Yes?" asked the mistress of Last's, straightening up. 

"Yes, sir, an' I hate like hell t' tell it. "

"Out with it, Billy. What's wrong?"

"Somebody's dynamited th' Crystal Spring in th' Cup Rim. "

"_What?_"

The word was in italics. Its one syllable told all one might care toknow of the importance of Billy's news. 

"Yes. Opened her up fer two square yards. Spread th' lovely oldCrystal all over th' range. An' she's gone, as sure's shootin'. Nothin' but a lot o' wet an' dryin' mud to show for her. "

Tharon drew a long breath. 

"Courtrey's beginnin', " she said. "He's heard th' word I sent th'settlers. He's goin' t' use th' tactics now with Last's that he's usedwith every poor devil he wanted to run out of th' Valley, th' tacticshe darsent use while Jim Last lived. Well--go send Conford to me, Billy. "

The girl sat down in the doorway and gazed sombrely out over thesummer land. 

When her foreman came and stood before her, a slim, efficient figure, dark-faced and quiet, she had already made up her mind. 

"Burt, " she said swiftly, "drive th' cattle down from th' Cup Rimright away. We'll run those two bunches under Blue Pine an' Nick Bobout toward th' Black Coulee. Tell 'em t' keep close t' th' others. Itrust th' Indians, but there ain't no Indian livin' can meetCourtrey's white renegades in courage an' wits. Then we'll start rightin an' dig a well th' first well ever dug on th' open range in thisman's land. "

"Good Lord, Tharon!" said Conford, "A well!"

"Yes. Th' livin' water holes have been th' pride of th' Valley, Iknow, but we'll fix this well of ours so's even Courtrey will respectit. "

There was a grim note in the golden voice. 

"How?" asked Conford uneasily. 

"Dig it first, " said Tharon, "then I'll tell you. "

What the mistress said, went. Therefore, the next morning saw adisgusted bunch of cowboys and Indian _vaqueros_ setting to with awill at a spot much nearer the Holding than the Crystal had been, andit took a much shorter time to reach water in a good gravel bed thanany one had dreamed. 

In three days the thing was done and Conford presented himself, smiling. 

"Now, Miss Secrecy, " he said, "come on with th' mystery. "

Tharon went in to the big desk which Jim Last had used and which wasnow her own, and returned with a square white slab of pine, elaborately smoothed and finished by José. 

"Read that, " she said, and held it up, face out. 

Printed neatly upon its shining surface, in the jet-black ink that oldAnita made from the berries of a certain bush which grew at the footof the cliffs across the Valley, were these words:

"This well is planted. I hope it blows up the first thief who tries todestroy it. Tharon Last. "

Conford took the slab, scratched his head, holding his hat betweenthumb and finger, read it over, read it again, smiled, and then lookedup. 

"Might work, " he said, "an' you're givin' out your stand an' knowledgebroadcast, ain't you?"

"Certainly am, " said Tharon briefly. "I said I'd fight, an' I want th'whole Valley t' know it. "

"It does, " said Conford with conviction. "I heard in Corvan yesterdaythat John Dement has rode th' range continuous since he finishedbrandin' his new herd to tell th' settlers about it. "

"Good, " said Tharon, "couldn't be better. There's got to be a changein Lost Valley sooner or later. Might as well be sooner. "

And with that thought the girl let her quick mind sweep out to take inthe future. She sent Conford off to post her placard and herself wentrummaging among the possibilities which her defy had placed beforeher. She knew that Courtrey would be coldly furious. He had lived hislife as suited him, had taken what and where he listed, by fair meansor foul, and though every soul in the Valley knew him and his methods, none had spoken the convicting word. It was the pen-stroke at the endof the death-warrant to do so. 

She knew that the faction of the settlers hated him and his with avitriolic passion, that they were in the minority, that they were notin gods themselves, and that they were being beaten out, one by one. 

Year by year Courtrey had added to his vast acreage, and it was amatter of common knowledge how he had done it. He was rich, powerful, bullying, a man whose self-aggrandizement knew no limit, whose merestwhim was his law, whose will must not be thwarted. Year by year his_vaqueros_ drove down the Wall herds of fat cattle, their brandsblurred, insolently raw and careless. Many a hapless man had stood andseen his own stock go by in Courtrey's band and dared not open hismouth. In fact Courtrey had been known to stop and chat with such aone, smiling his evil smile and enjoying the helpless chagrin of hisvictim. 

"Insolent ruffian!" muttered Tharon this day, frowning above herdaddy's pipes on the desk top. "He's goin' t' get one run for hismoney from now till one of us is whipped. It may be me, but I'llleave my mark on him, so help me!

"Straight killin's too good for him. I want to smash him first. "

"Tharon, mi _Corazon_, " said Anita, stopping soft-foot beside her, "itis bad for one to talk so, to himself. The Evil One works on the mindthat way. "

Tharon laughed. 

"Perhaps, Anita, " she said shortly, "it is with the Evil One I have t'do, an' no mistake. "

The old woman crossed herself and went away, her wrinkled face dimwith care. And Tharon dressed herself neatly, put a ribbon on herhair, set her wide hat carefully on her head, buckled on her heavygun-belt, and went to the corral for El Rey. Her daddy's saddle washer own now, a huge affair carved and ornamented, profusely studdedwith silver. 

Along the right side below the pommel ran a darker stain, Jim Last'sblood, set before his daughter like a star. 

She mounted the silver stallion and went away down along the summerland, a shaft of light shooting through the green of the ranges. 

Far over to her left she could see her cattle, beautiful bunchesspread like figures in a tapestry. The figures of her riders weresmall dots on the outskirts. 

El Rey, always hard on the bit, always strong-headed, wanted to runand she swung loose her rein and let him go. But run as he might, there was always in his speed that rising note, that seeming ofreserve power. 

She passed the head of Black Coulee, swung out across the edge ofRolling Cove, thundered down to the ford of the Broken Bend. Here shelet the stallion drink, deep draughts that would have slowed a lesserhorse. El Rey went up the bank beyond the ford like a charging engine, squared away and stretched out to finish his run. He was within threemiles of Corvan, set like a stone in a smooth green surface, before hecame down and lifted his shoulders into his gait. With the first rockand swing of the singlefoot, Tharon smiled and settled herself morecomfortably in the saddle. This was joy to her, this beautifulsyncopation, this poetic marked time that reeled off the miles beneathher and would scarcely have shaken a pebble from her hat-brim. 

As she struck the outskirts of the little town the unmistakable soundof El Rey's iron-shod hoofs brought heads into doors, children at thehouse corners to look upon her. She came down the main street at asmart clip, to bring up with a slide at the hitch-rail beforeBaston's store where the monthly mail was handled. There were horsestied there, and among them she saw what caused her to look twice witha narrowing of her keen eyes--a huge, raw-boned, black, rusty andslug-headed, among the Ironwood bays from Courtrey's Stronghold. 

"H'm, " she told herself quietly, "so there's where he was expected. "

She tied El Rey to himself, far from the rest, for she knew hisimperious temper and that trouble would ensue if he was near strangehorses. 

Then she went into Baston's with her meal-sack on her arm. Thismeal-sack was a part of her accoutrement, a regular carry-all for suchsmall purchases as she must take home--a roll of print for Paula, sometobacco for the men, a dozen spools of the linen thread which was somuch prized among the women of Lost Valley. 

As she stepped in the open door her quick glance went over the bigroom with a comprehensiveness which catalogued its inmates accuratelyand instinctively. Courtrey was not there, though his great bay, Bolt, stood outside. However, Wylackie Bob was there. This man, sitting at acanvas covered table in a corner, idly fingering a pack of cards, wasnot one to be passed over easily. He was notorious. 

Tall, slow of action, sleepy-eyed, he was treacherous as a snake, asswift to move when necessary. He had been known to sit as he was now, idly playing, to leap up, crouch, draw and kill a man, and be downagain at his place, idly playing, before the breath was done in hisvictim. 

He was a past-master of his gun, and unlike most men of the time andplace, he carried only one. 

He was a quarter-blood Wylackie Indian. Near him sat the stranger whohad ridden the slug-head black into Lost Valley. They both looked upas the girl entered and regarded her with smiles. 

Tharon did not look at them again. She saw, however, that they weretogether, of one interest. There were two or three of the settlers inthe store, Jameson from over under the Rockface at the south, Hillfrom farther up, Thomas from Rolling Cove. She spoke to these menquietly and noticed with an inward thrill the eagerness with whichthey responded. 

There was an electric something between them which told her that herpromise had, indeed, gone up and down the country, that in a subtle, unheralded manner she stood in Jim Last's place, a head, a leader. 

She made her purchases without undue speech, got two letters in herfather's name--and these brought a smarting under her eyelids--tied upher sack and went out without so much as a glance at the two men inthe corner. Laughter followed her, however, which set the red blood ofanger pulsing in her cheeks. 

At the end of the store porch she came face to face with Courtrey andSteptoe Service, the sheriff of Menlo county. She swung to one side todescend the rough steps, vouchsafing them no word or look, but Serviceblocked her way. She raised her eyes and looked him full in the face, scanning his coarse red features coolly. 

"Well?" she said sharply. 

"What's this I hear, Tharon?" asked Service, "about you a-makin'threats?"

"What have you heard?" she wanted to know. 

"W'y, that you're a-makin' threats. "

"Yes?"

"Yes, sir. "

"Well?"

The sheriff flushed darker. 

"Look here, young woman, "--he raised his voice suddenly and on theinstant there was a sound of boots on the store floor and thesettlers, the two men in the corner, Baston and two clerks camecrowding out to hear, "you look a-here--don't you know it's a-gin th'law for any one t' make a threat like you done, open an' above board, in th' Golden Cloud th' other night?"

Tharon shifted the meal-sack higher on her left arm. Courtrey's eyeswent down to her right hand and stayed there. 

The girl's upper lip lifted from her teeth in a sneer that was theacme of insult. The fire was beginning to play in her blue eyes. 

"Law?" she said. "My God! Law!"

"Yes, _law_! you young hussy, an' don't you fergit that I representit. "

The girl threw down the sack and flashed both hands on the gun-butts. Courtrey, watching, was half-a-second behind her and stopped with hishands hovering. 

"Not much, Courtrey, " she said, "you fast gun man! You're too slow. An' this ain't your game, anyway, not face t' face. You're all righton a dark night--_an' from behind_. Fine! But you're a coward. You'rewhat I called you before--an assassin. "

She was pale as ashes, her eyes narrowed to blazing slits. Jim Last, gun man, was in her like those composite pictures which show theshadow in the substance. There was a gasp from the store porch whereThomas stood with a shaking hand covering his lips. Baston was stuckagainst his wall like a leech, rigid. These men knew that she tempteddeath. 

Not a man in Lost Valley could have done it and gotten away with it. 

Tharon knew it, too, but she did not care. 

"An' now you know what you are, Courtrey. I'll tell th' same to you, Step Service. Law! In Lost Valley? Yes, Courtrey's law! Th' law of th'gun alone--th' law of thieves--th' law of murderers. An' you stand forthat, you bet! What were you before you took th' oath of office? Tellme that! Th' man who killed old Mike McCrea an' took his cattle downth' Wall! Th' whole Valley knows it--but we've never dared to say itbefore!"

The porch was lined with people now. Soft-footed Indians and Mexican_vaqueros_, sprung from nowhere, cowboys, ranchers, women, they camesilently up and listened. 

The sheriff's red face was the colour of liver, purple and mottledwith bursting rage. His fingers worked at his sides. He set his lips, and his small eyes never left the girl's face. 

Tharon, crouched a bit, her feet apart, her elbows crooked above herhips, her fingers curled on her gun-butts with nice precision, wet herown pale lips and continued:

"An' who put you in office? That laugh of an office! Who? Why, Courtrey--th' biggest thief, th' coldest murderer in th' country! _He_put you there! An' what are you good for? My daddy was shot--_in th'back_--an' did you make one inquiry into the murder? Come out toLast's, even to find a clew? Not you! There's only one sheriff in thisValley--one bit o' law that will avenge his death--an' that's _me_!Now, you two fine gentlemen--I'm goin'. There's my hand! I throw th'cards on th' table! Shoot me in the back if you've got th' nerve. Comeout in th' open an' fight! _But you better be quick about it!_"

With that she backed slowly along the porch, keeping them in view. 

"Get away behind me, " she called. There was a path opened instantly, the sound of shuffling feet. Along the porch she went, step by step, stopping every moment or so to keep close hold on her advantage, everynerve strained, every one of her faculties at the top of its power. 

She felt for the step with her foot, went down, backed through thecrowd, brought them all in the range of the guns which she flashed outnow and held upon them. 

She was ashy pale, a flaming, vibrant thing. Not a man there but knewshe was more dangerous at the moment than cool Jim Last had ever been, for she radiated hatred of her father's killer in every bitterglance. She had none for whom to be cautious. She was the last of herblood. She was efficient, and she knew it. 

Courtrey knew it, and felt the sweat start on his skin. 

Service knew it, and hated her for it. 

As the girl backed clear there came into her vision a strangefigure--the straight, trim figure of a man who stood stiffly atattention, where her imperious words had caught him. 

He wore a uniform of semi-military style, leather leggings, a flannelshirt of butternut and a smart, tan, broad-brimmed hat. 

He, too, came in the range of the travelling guns and waited theirpleasure. 

Tharon reached El Rey. She stuck her right-hand weapon in its holster, loosed the rein, flung it over the stallion's head, stepped around hisshoulder and mounted deftly and swiftly from the wrong side. It was apretty trick of horsemanship and showed up her adroitness. As El Reyrose on his hind feet, whirling, that unwavering muzzle whirled also, to keep in line. The king struck into his gait and his rider, facingbackward, swung away down the narrow street. Until she was well out ofrange the tension held. 

Then Steptoe Service struck a fist into a palm and began to swear ina fury, but Courtrey laughed, one of his rare, short bursts of mirththat were more bodeful than oaths. 

He turned on his heel and strode back the way he had come. 

The stranger in the uniform walked forward, went up the steps, crossedthe porch, and, stooping, picked up the meal-sack which Tharon haddropped. 

"Will some one kindly tell me who the young lady is and where shelives?" he asked gravely. 

Baston, unglued from the wall, spoke up with his usual pompouseagerness. 

"Tharon, from Last's Holdin', " he said. 

"Thanks, " and the man wrapped the sack into a small bundle and tied itwith its own string. 

He stuck it under one arm and taking out a short brown pipe, proceededto fill and light it. 

Courtrey, halted a few rods away, eyed him sharply. 

As he turned, rolling his match to death in his fingers, the sunstruck mellowly upon something on his breast, a small, dark coppershield which bore strange heraldry. 

At the sight Courtrey's eyes sought Service's and held them for aswift, questioning moment. 

Strangers in Lost Valley were contraband. 

The three settlers looked covertly at each other, drifted apart, gottheir horses and presently left town by different ways. 

Three hours later these men met by common consent at the head ofRolling Cove and talked long and earnestly of the happening. They knewthat Courtrey would never take silently that bitter arraignment, thatsomething would transpire swiftly to show his resentment, to prove hisabsolute power over Lost Valley. 

"'Tain't Tharon that'll suffer, even ef he did try t' shoot her thatnight in th' Golden Cloud, because Courtrey wants her himself, " saidJameson quietly, "th' whole country knows that. There was only one manwho didn't know it, an' that was Jim Last himself. No, he won't monkeywith th' Holdin' yet, not to any great extent. It'll be us littlefellers, us others who he knows would stan' behind her. Some of us'lllose somethin' soon, an' don't you forget it. "

"If we do, " said Hill passionately, "it's time t' show our hand. We'vebeen hounded long enough. Th' men from Last's will be with us, we cangamble on that. "

"Yes, " said Thomas, "but it'll be war. Open war. There'll be killin'sthen. "

Jameson, a quiet man with deep eyes, made a wide gesture. 

"What if there is?" he asked, "might's well be done in th' open as inth' dark an' unseen. Might better be! I move we ride th' Valley an'ask th' settlers to band together, under Last's, an' give ourultimatum t' Courtrey on th' heels of this. What say you?"

"I say yes, " said Hill swiftly. Thomas, of less stern stuff, wavered. 

"Well, let's wait awhile. Let's don't be too quick. Courtrey now, he'smighty quick an' hot. They ain't no tellin'----"

"All right, " said Jameson promptly, "suit yourself--we ain'ta-pressin' no man into this. "

"Why, now, I'm fer it, boys--that is, I'm believin' it's got t' bedone, only I counsels time. "

"No time, " cried Hill, "we ben counselin' time an' quiet an' not doin'anything to stir 'em up, an' what d' we get? Cattle stole everyspring, waterholes taken an' fenced fer Courtrey's stock right on th'open range, hogs drove off, fences tore down, like pore old JohnDement's an' some of us left t' rot every year in some coulee. We donewaited a sight too long. Courtrey thinks he owns Lost Valley, an' hecomes near doin' it, what with his hired killers, Wylackie an' BlackBart an' this new gun man that's just come in. I heered today he'sfrom Arizona, an' imported article. "

Jameson turned to him and held out his hand. 

"I'm goin' to ride tomorrow, " he said. 

Hill grasped the extended hand and looked hard in the other's eyes. 

"Me, too, " he said. 

Thomas, still of the timid, doubting heart, watched them with a handover his mouth to hide its shaking. 

Without a word the others turned their horses and rode away indifferent directions. As they went farther from him in the wash of thelate light the uncertain hand came down with a jerk. Fear was in hiseyes, the deep, quaking fear of the man poor in courage, but he beatit down. 

"Boys!" he cried in a panic, "don't leave me out! For God's sake, don't think I ain't willin'! I'll be out come day tomorrow!"

The others both stopped and turned in their saddles. 

"Glad to hear ye come through, Thomas, " called Jameson, "you ridesouth along th' Rockface. You'll go over Black Coulee way, won't ye, Dan?"

"I will, " said Hill. 

"Good. I'll go north. "

There was a quiet grimness in the few words, for he who rode north onsuch an errand tempted fate. 

Then the three separated, and there was only the silence and the redlight of the dying day at the head of Rolling Cove. 

That same evening Tharon Last sat in her western doorway and watchedthe sun go down in majesty over the weathered peaks and ridges of theCañon Country. 

Billy Brent lounged on the hard earth beside the step, his fair headshining in the afterglow, his grey eyes upon the girl's face in a sortof idol-worship. 

The curve of her cheek, golden with tan and red with the hue of youth, was more to him than all the sunsets the world had ever seen. 

A deep light shone in his young eyes which, had the girl been wise, she might have seen. But Tharon was as elemental as the kitten chasinga moth out by the pansy bed, and could look in a man's face with theunconscious eyes of a child. 

Now she watched the pageant of the dying day in a rapt delight. 

"Billy, " she said presently, "I've often wondered if there's anotherplace in all the world as lovely as our Valley. Jim Last told me oncethat there were places so much bigger out below, that we wouldn't be apatchin' to them. Don't seem like there could be. "

She lifted her slim body up along the doorpost and looked long andearnestly all up and down the wonderful stretch of country that layalong the Wall from north to south. She could see the tiny dots thatwent for the different homesteads, scattered here and there. Up at thehead there lay, hard against the frowning hills, the squat, wide blurthat was Courtrey's Stronghold. Her lips compressed at sight of it. 

"Nope, " she said, shaking her head, "I don't believe he meant it. Heused to tease me a lot, you know. It's an awful big valley, an' nomistake. "

The rider, who had drifted up along the Wall five years before, lookeddown at the playing kitten and smiled with a lean crinkling of hischeeks. 

"It's a sure-enough big place, Tharon, " he said gravely, "an' it'slovely as Eden. "

"Huh?" said Tharon, "where's that, Billy?"

The boy sobered and looked up into her blue eyes. 

"Why, Tharon, " he whispered, "that's where th' heart is. "

For a moment she regarded him. Then she smiled. 

"Billy, " she said severely, "you're stringin' your boss. I'm suregoin' to fire you, some day, like I ben a-threatenin'. "

"Do--an' hire me over!"

"Nope. "

The girl shut her pretty lips and the man's hand crept softly up andtouched her wrist where it lay against her knee. 

"All right, " he said airily, "gimme my time. I quit. "

There was an odd note in his voice, as if under the play there was apurpose. For a second Tharon held her breath. 

"What you mean, Billy?" she asked so sharply that the boy jumped. 

Then he laughed, still in that light fashion. 

"What I said, " he affirmed doggedly. 

But the mistress of Last's took a clutch on his hand that wasauthority in force and leaned down to look anxiously in his face. 

"Why, Billy, " she said with a quiver in her voice, "Last's couldn'trun without you, boy. An' what's more, I thought all th' riders of th'Holdin' would stand by th' place. "

Billy, fully sobered, straightened up and held hard to that clutchinghand. The red light of the sunset flushed his cheeks, but it never setthe glow that was in his eyes. 

"Don't you know yet, Tharon, " he said quietly, "when I'm a-jokin' withyou? I'd stand by Last's an' you to my last breath. Don't you knowthat?"

For a long moment Tharon regarded him gravely. 

"Yes, I do, " she said, "but somehow I don't like to have you talkthat-a-way, Billy. Don't do it no more. "

"All right, " promised the rider, "if you say so, Boss. Only don't talkabout firin' me, then. I'm very sensitive. "

And he looked away with smiling eyes to where the deep black shadowsfell prone into the Valley from the forbidding face of the greatWall. 

Only the towering peaks were alight with crimson and gold, whichhaloed their bulk in majestic mystery. 

Night was coming fast across Lost Valley, while the tree-toads out bythe springhouse set up their nightly chorus. 

"It's Eden, " thought the man, "as sure's th' world, made an' forgotwith all its trimmin's--innocence an' sweetness an' plenty, an' th'silence of perfect peace, not to overlook th' last unnecessary evil, th' livin' presence of his majesty, th' devil. "

Then the light died wholly and there came the disturbing sound ofboots on the ringing stones. The rest of the riders were coming in toclaim their share of Billy's Eden. 

CHAPTER IV

UNBROKEN BREAD

Jameson, Hill and Thomas were as good as their word. During the weekthat followed the spectacular denouncement of Courtrey and Service atBaston's store, they went quietly to every settler in the Valley anddeclared themselves. In almost every instance they met with eagerpledges of approval. They knew, every man of them, that this slowbanding together for resistance against Courtrey and his power meantopen war. For years they had suffered indignities and hardship withoutprotest. While Jim Last lived they had had a sort of leader, anexample, though they had feared to follow in his lead too strongly. 

They had copied his methods of guarding possessions, of corralingevery cattle-brute at night, of keeping every horse under bars. Lasthad looked Courtrey in the face. The rest dared not. 

Now with Last gone, they felt the lack, as if a bastion had beenrazed, leaving them in the open. Secrecy in Lost Valley had beenbrought to a work of art. They could hold their tongues. 

But with the new knowledge Tharon Last took on a light, a halo. 

Men spoke in whispers about her daring. They felt it themselves. 

Word of her lightning quickness with her daddy's guns, of heraccuracy, went softly all about and about, garbled and accentuated. They said she could shoot the studs from the sides of a man's belt andnever touch him. They said she could drive a nail farther than theordinary man could see. They said she could draw so swiftly that themotion of the hands was lost. 

A slow excitement took the faction of the settlers. 

But out at Last's Holding a grave anxiety sat upon Tharon's riders. Conford knew--and Billy knew--and Curly knew more about Courtrey'sintent than some of the others. Young Paula, half asleep in the deeprecesses of the house, had witnessed that furious encounter by thewestern door on the soft spring day when Jim Last had come home to dieat dusk. She knew that the look in Courtrey's eyes had beencovetousness--and she had told José. José, loyal and sensible, hadtold the boys. So now there was always one or more of them on dutynear the mistress of Last's on one pretext or another. To Tharon, whoknew more than all of them put together, this was funny. 

It stirred the small mirth there was in her these days, and often shesent them away, to have them turn up at the most unexpected times andplaces. 

"You boys!" she would say whimsically, "you think Courtrey's goin' tocart me off livin'?"

"That's just what we are afraid of, Tharon, " answered Conford gravelyonce, "we know it'd not be _livin'_. "

And Tharon had looked away toward José's cross, and frowned. 

"No, " she said, "an' it won't be any way, _livin'_ or dead. "

One night toward the end of that week a strange cavalcade wound upalong the levels, past the head of Black Coulee, forded the BrokenBend in silence save for the stroke of hoof and iron shoe on stone, and went toward Last's. There were thirty men, riding close, and theyhad nothing to say in the darkness. 

At the Holding Tharon Last waited them on her western doorstep. 

As they rode in along the sounding-board the muffled ringing of thehoofs seemed to the girl as the call of clarions. The heart in herbreast leaped with a strange thrill, a gladness. She felt as if herfather's spirit stood behind her waiting the first step toward thefulfillment of her promise. 

The riders stopped in the soft darkness. There was no moon and thevery winds seemed to have hushed their whispers in the cottonwoods. 

"Tharon, " said the man who rode in the lead, and she recognized thevoice of Jameson from the southern end of the Valley, "we've come. "

That was all. A simple declaration, awaiting her disposal. 

Conford, not half approving, his heart heavy with foreboding, stood athis mistress' shoulder and waited, too. 

For a long moment there was no sound save the eternal tree-toads attheir concert. Then the girl spoke, and it seemed to those shadowylisteners that they heard again the voice of Jim Last, sane, commanding, full of courage and conviction. 

"I'm glad, " said Tharon simply, "th' time has come when Lost Valleyhas got t' stand or fall forever. Courtrey's gettin' stronger everyday, more careless an' open. He's been content to steal a bunch ofcattle here, another there, a little at a time. Now he's takin' themby th' herds, like John Dement's last month. He's got a wife, an' fromwhat I've always heard, she's a sight too good fer him. But he wantsmore--he wants _me_. He's offered me th' last insult, an' as JimLast's daughter I'm a-goin' to even up my score with him, an' it's gotthree counts. You've all got scores against him. "

Here there were murmurs through the silent group. 

"Th' next outrage from Courtrey, on any one of us, gets all of ustogether. For every cattle-brute run off by Courtrey's band, we'lltake back one in open day, all of us ridin'. We'll have to shoot, butI'm ready. Are you?"

Every man answered on the instant. 

"Then, " said the girl tensely, "get down an' sign. "

There was a rattle of stirrups and bits, a creak of leather as thirtymen swung off their horses. 

Tharon stepped back in the lighted room. Her men stood there againstthe walls. The settlers came diffidently in across the sill, lean, poor men for the most part, their strained eyes and furrowed facesshowing the effect of hardships. Not a man there but had seen himselfdespoiled, had swallowed the bitter dose in helplessness. 

Most of them were married and had families. Some of them had killingsto their record. Many of them were none too upright. 

Jameson was a good man, and so was Dan Hill. Thomas was merely weak. Buford was a gun man who had protected his own much better than therest. McIntyre was like him. One by one they came forward as Tharoncalled them by name, and leaning down, put their names or their marksto a sheet of paper which bore these few simple lines:

"We, the signers named below, do solemnly promise and pledge ourselvesto stand together, through all consequences of this act, for theprotection of our lives and property. For every piece of propertytaken from any one of us, we shall go together and take back it, orits worth, from whoever took it. For every person killed in any way, but fair-and-open, we promise to hang the murderer. "

Billy had drafted the document. Tharon, whom Jim Last had taught herletters, read it aloud. The names of Last's Holding headed it. Thethirty names and marks--and of the latter there were many--stretchedto the bottom of the sheet. 

When it was done the girl folded it solemnly and put it away in thedepths of the big desk. Old Anita, watching from the shadows of theeating room beyond, put her _reboso_ over her head and rocked insilent grief. She had seen tragic things before. 

Then these lean and quiet men filed out, mounted the waiting horsesand went away in the darkness, mysterious figures against the stars. 

That night Tharon Last sat late by the deep window in her own room atthe south of the ranch house. It was a huge old room, high walled andsombre. There were bright blankets hung like pictures on the walls, baskets marvelously woven of grass and rushes, thick mats on the floormade in like manner and of a tough, long-fibred grass that grew downin a swale beyond the Black Coulee, while in one corner there shonepale in the darkness the one great treasure of that unknown mother, analmost life-size statue of the Holy Virgin. 

Of this beautiful thing Tharon had stood in awe from babyhood. 

A half fearful reverence bowed her before it on those rare times whenAnita, throwing back to her Mexic ancestors, worshipped with vaguerites at its feet. 

Always its waxen hands bore offerings, silent tribute from the girl'sstill nature. Sometimes these were the prairie flowers, little wildthings, sweet and fragile. Sometimes they were sprays of the watervines that grew by the wonderful spring of the Holding. 

Again they were strings of bright beads, looped and falling inglistening cascades over the tarnished gilt robes of the Virgin. 

Under the deep window there was a wide couch, piled high with a narrowmattress of wild goose feathers and covered with a crimson blanket. Here the girl sat with her arms on the sill and looked out into thedarkness that covered the Valley. She thought of the thirty men whohad signed her paper, riding far and by in the sounding basin, returning to their uncertain homes. She thought of her father asleepunder his peaceful cross, of young Harkness beside him. 

She thought of Courtrey and Service and Wylackie Bob, of Black Bartand the stranger from Arizona. They were a hard bunch to tackle. 

They had the Valley under their thumbs to do with as they pleased, like the veriest Roman potentate of old. Her daddy had told her once, when she was small and lonely of winter nights, strange old tales ofrulers and their helpless subjects. Jim Last could talk when heneeded, though he was a man of conserved speech. 

Yes, Courtrey was like a king in Lost Valley, absolute. She thought ofthe many crimes done and laid to his door since she could remember, ofcountless cattle run off, of horses stolen and shamelessly ridden ingrinning defiance of any who might dare to identify them, of Cap Hartkilled on the Stronghold's range and left to rot under the open skies, a warning like those birds of prey that are shot and hung to scaretheir kind. Her soft lips drew themselves into a hard line, very likeJim Last's, and the heart in her ratified its treaty with the thirtymen. 

She had none to mourn her, she thought a trifle sadly--well Anita andPaula, of course, and there were her riders. Billy would grieve--he'dkill some one if she were killed--and Conford and Jack. 

A warm glow pervaded her being. Yes, she had folks, even if she wasthe last of her blood. 

But she didn't intend to be killed. She was right, and she hadlistened enough to Anita to believe with a superstitious certainty, that right was invulnerable. For instance, if she and Courtrey shoulddraw at the same second, she believed absolutely, that because she wasin the right, her bullet would travel a bit the swifter, her aim betruer. She felt in her heart with a profound conviction that some dayshe would kill Courtrey. She thought of his wife, Ellen, a pale flowerof a woman, white as milk, with hair the colour of unripe maize, andwondered if she loved the man who made her life hell, so the Valleywhispered. Tharon wondered how it would seem to love a man, as womenwho were wives must love their men--if the agony of loss to Ellencould be as acute and terrifying as hers had been ever since that softnight in spring when her best friend, Jim Last, had come home on ElRey. 

She thought of the grey look on his face, of the pinched line at hisnostrils' base, and the tears came miserably under her lids, she laidher head on the cloth mat that covered the wide window ledge and weptlike any child for a time. Then she wiped her face with her hands, sighed, and fell again to thinking. 

An hour later as she rose to make ready for bed, she thought shecaught a faint sound out where the little rock-bordered paths ran inwhat she was pleased to call her garden, since a few hardy flowersgrew by the spring's trickle, and she held her breath to listen. Itwas nothing, however, she thought, and turned into the deep room. 

Only the tree-toads, long since silent, knew that a cigarette, carefully shielded in a palm, glowed in the darkness. 

Two days after this a visitor came to Last's. From far down they sawhim coming, in the mid-morning while the work of the house wentforward. Paula, bringing a pan of milk from the springhouse spied himfirst and stopped to satisfy her young eyes with the unwontedappearance of him. She looked long, and hurried in to tell hermistress. 

"Señorita, " she said excitedly, "see who comes! A stranger who hasdifferent clothes from any other. He rides not like Lost Valley men, either, being too stiff and straight. Come, see. "

And Tharon, busy about the kitchen in her starched print dress, dropped everything at once to run with Paula to the western door ofthe living room that they might look south. 

"_Muchachas_ both, " complained old Anita, "the milk is spilled and the_pan dulce_ burns in the oven! Tch, tch!"

But the young creatures in the west door cared naught for hergrumbling. 

"Who can it be, to come so, Señorita?" wondered Paula, her brown cheekbeside her mistress, "is he not handsome!"

"For mercy sake, Paula, " chided Tharon laughing, "I believe you'd lookfor beauty in th' ol' Nick himself if he rode up. But I've seen thisman before. "

"Where? When?"

"In town that day I met Courtrey an' Service. I remember seen' himcome into line as I backed out--he was standin' between th' racks an'th' porch, somewhere. " And she narrowed her eyes and studied the rideras he came jogging up across the range. 

"H'm, " she said presently, "he does ride funny. I bet he ain't roderange much in _his_ life. Stiff as a ramrod, an' no mistake. "

Then with an unconscious grace and poise that set well upon her as themistress of Last's, Tharon moved into the open door and waited. 

As the stranger came closer both girls subjected him to a frank andcareful scrutiny that in any other place than Lost Valley would havebeen rudeness itself. 

Here it catalogued the stranger, set the style of his welcome. 

It left him stripped of surprise, outwardly, before he was withinspeaking distance. 

It told the observers that he was young, of some twenty-six or seven, that his face, the first point taken in with lightning swiftness--wasdifferent from most faces they had ever seen, that it was open, smiling, easy, that he was straight as a ramrod, indeed, that he rodeas if he feared nothing in the earth or the heavens, that he carriedno gun, that he wore the peculiar uniform that Tharon had noticedbefore, and that there was something on his breast, a dark shield ofsome sort which made them think of Steptoe Service and his disgracedsheriff's star. This thought brought a frown to Tharon's brows, and itwas there to greet the stranger when he rode up to the step andhalted, his smart tan hat in his hand. The morning sun burned warmlydown on his dark hair, which was brushed straight back from hisforehead in a way unknown in those parts. His dark eyes, slow and deepbut somehow merry, took in the pretty picture in the door. 

"Miss Last?" he asked in a low voice. 

"Yes, " said Tharon promptly and waited. 

Every one waited in Lost Valley for a stranger to make known hisbusiness. Paula drew back behind her mistress. 

The man sat still on his horse and waited, too. The silence becameprofound. The hens cackling about the barns intruded sharply. 

"Well, " he said presently, "I am a stranger, and I came to see you. "

The girl in the doorway felt a hot surge of discomfort flare over herfor the first time in her life for such a reason. 

There was something in the low voice that implied a lack, accused herof something. She resented it instantly. 

"If that is so, " she said slowly, "light. "

The man laughed delightedly, and swung quickly down, dropping hisrein. Tharon noticed that. That much was natural. He held his hatagainst his breast with one hand and came forward with the samequickness, holding out the other. Tharon was not used to shakinghands with strange men. She gave her hand diffidently, because he soevidently expected it, and took it away swiftly. 

"My name, " he said, "is Kenset--David Kenset, and I am fromWashington, D. C. "

He might as well have said Timbuctoo. Tharon Last knew little outsideher own environment. Words and names that had to do with unknownplaces were vague things to her. 

"Yes?" she answered politely, "I make no doubt you've come far. Comein. Dinner'll soon be ready, " and she moved back from the door with asmile that covered her pitiful ignorance as with a garment of gold. When Tharon smiled like that she was wholly adorable, and the man knewit at once. 

Why she had so quickly invited him in before he had fully declaredhimself, she did not know, unless it was because of that lack in herwhich his first words had implied. 

Old Anita, whose manners were the simple and perfect ones of theMexican coupled to a kindly heart, had taught her how to comport. 

Her easy and constant association with the riders and _vaqueros_ haddulled her somewhat, but she could be royal on occasion. 

Now she simply stepped back in the deep cool room where the _ollas_swung in the windows, smiled--and she was changed entirely from thegirl of a few moments before. 

The man came in, laid his hat on the flat top of the melodeon, walkedover to a chair and sat down. There was an ease about him, ataking-for-granted, that amazed Tharon beyond words. 

Then he looked frankly at her and began to talk as if he had known heralways. 

"I've come to live in Lost Valley, Miss Last, " he said, "for a longwhile, I think. Wish me luck. "

"Come here to live?" said Tharon, "a settler? Goin' to homestead?"

He shook his head. 

"No. "

A quick suspicion seized her. Perhaps Washington was like Arizona, aplace from which they imported gun men. Only this man wore no gun, andhe had not a look of prowess. No. This man was different. 

"Then what you goin' to do?" she asked as frankly as a child. 

"First, " he said, "I'm going up where the pines grow yonder and buildmyself a house, " and he waved a hand toward the east where the rangesrolled up to the thickening fringes of the forest that marched backinto the ramparts of the trail-less hills. 

"I want to find an ideal spot, a glade where the pines stand round theedges, with a spring of living water running down, and where I canlook down and over the magnificent reaches of Lost Valley. I shallmake me a home, and then I shall work. "

"Ride?" asked the girl succinctly. 

"Ride? Of course, that will be a great part of that work. "

"Who for?"

He looked at her sharply. 

"Who for?"

"Yes. What outfit?"

There was a hard quality in her voice. If he had come in to ride forCourtrey, why he must know at once that Last's was no friend of his, now or ever. 

He caught the drift of her thought in part. 

"For no outfit, Miss Last, " he said with a gentle dignity. "I am inthe employ of the United States Government. "

A swift change came over Tharon's face. 

Government!

That was no word to conjure by in Lost Valley. Steptoe Service pratedof Gov'ment. It was a farce, a synonym for juggled duty, a word tosuggest the one-man law of the place, for even Courtrey, who made thesheriffs--and unmade them--did it under the grandiloquent name ofGovernment. She looked at him keenly, and there was a sudden hardeningin her young eyes. 

"Then I reckon, Mister, " she said coolly, "that you an' me can't befriends. "

"What?"

"No, sir. "

"Are you in earnest?"

"Certainly am, " said Tharon. "I ain't on good terms at present withanything that has t' do with law. "

David Kenset leaned forward and looked into her face with his deep, compelling eyes. 

"I guessed as much from my first knowledge of you the other day, " heanswered, "but we are on unfamiliar ground. You have a wrongconception of Government, a perverted idea of law and what it standsfor. "

"All right, Mister, " said the girl rising. "We won't argy. I asked yout' dinner, but I take it back. I ask ye t' forgive me my manners, butth' sooner we part th' better. Then we won't be a-hurtin' each other'sfeelin's. I'm fer law, too, but it ain't your kind, an' we ain'tlikely to agree. "

She picked up his hat from where it lay on the melodeon and fingeredit a bit, smiling at him in the ingenuous manner that was utterlydisarming. 

A slow dark flush spread over the man's face. He laughed, however, andin reaching for the hat, caught two of her fingers, whether purposelyor not, Tharon could not tell. 

"Admirable hospitality in the last frontier, " he said. "But perhaps Ishould not have expected anything different. "

"You make me ashamed, " said Tharon straightly, "but Last's ain'ttakin' chances these days. You may belong to Government, an' you maybelong to Courtrey, an' I'm against 'em both. "

She walked with him to the door, stepped out, as if with some thoughtto soften her unprecedented treatment of the stranger under her roof. She noted the trim figure of him in its peculiar garb, the proudcarriage, the even and easy comportment under insult. 

From his saddle he untied a package wrapped in paper. 

"Will you please take this?" he asked lightly, holding it out. "Juston general principles. "

But she shook her head. 

"I can't take no favours from you when I've just took stand againstyou, can I?" she asked in turn. 

"Well, of all the ridiculous----"

The man laughed again shortly, tossed the package on the step, mounted, whirled and rode away without a backward glance. 

Tharon stood frowning where he left her until the brown horse and itsrider were well down along the levels toward Black Coulee. 

Then a sigh at her shoulder recalled her and she turned to see thewistful dark face of Paula gazing raptly in the same direction. 

"He was so handsome, Señorita, " said the girl, "to be so hardly dealtwith. "

"Paula, " said the mistress bitingly, "will you remember who you'retalkin' to? Do you want to go back to th' Pomos under th' Rockface?"

"Saints forbid!" cried Paula instantly. 

"Then keep your sighs for José an' mind your manners. Pick up thatbundle. "

Swiftly and obediently the girl did as she was told, unrolling thewrapper from the package. 

She brought to light the meal-sack which Tharon had dropped that dayon Baston's porch. 

A slow flush stained Tharon's cheeks at the sight, and she wentabruptly into the house. 

When the riders came in at night she told them in detail about thewhole affair, for Last's and its men were one, their interests thesame. 

They held counsel around the long table in the dining room under thehanging lamp, and Conford at her right was spokesman for the rest. 

"He's somethin' official, all right, I make no doubt, Tharon, " he saidwhen he had listened attentively, "but what or who I don't know. Iheard from Dixon about him comin' into Corvan that day, an' that hehad rode far. No one knows his business, or what he's in Lost Valleyfor. He's some mysterious. "

"He's goin' to stay, so he told me, " went on the girl, "goin' to builda house up where the pines begin an' means to ride. But how'll helive? What an' who will he ride for? He said for Government. "

"What's he mean by that?"

"Search me. "

"Wasn't there nothin' about him different? Nothin' you could judge himby?" asked Billy. 

"Yes, there was. He wore somethin' on his breast, a sign, a dull-likething with words an' letters on it. "

"So?" said Conford quickly, "what was it like, Tharon? Can't youdescribe it?"

"Can with a pencil, " said Tharon, rising. "Come on in. "

She went swiftly to the big desk in the other room and rummaged amongits drawers for paper and pencil. These things were precious in LostValley. 

Jim Last had had great stacks of paper, neat, glazed sheets with faintlines upon them, made somewhere in that mysterious "below" and broughtin by pack train. It was on one of these, with the distinctive words"Last's Holding" printed at the top, that the thirty men had signedthemselves into the new law of the Valley. 

To Tharon these sheets had always been magic, invested with gravedignity. 

Anything done upon them was of import, irrevocable. 

Thus had Jim Last inscribed the semi-yearly letters that went down theWall with the cattle, or for supplies. 

Now she spread a shining pad under the light, sat down in her father'schair and began, carefully and minutely to reproduce the badge thatmeant authority of a sort, yet was not a sheriff's star. 

The riders, clustered at her shoulder, watched the thing take shapeand form. At the end of twenty painstaking minutes Tharon straightenedand looked up in the interested faces. 

"There, " she said, "an' its dull copper colour!"

And this was the shield with its unknown heraldry which Conford tookup and studied carefully for a long time. 

"'Forest Service, '" he read aloud, "'Department of Agriculture. ' Well, so far as I can see, it ain't so terrifyin'. That last means raisin'things, like beets an' turnips an' so on, an' as for th' forest part, why, if he stays up in his 'fringe o' pines' I guess we ain't got nocall to kick. Don't you worry, Tharon, about this new bird. "

"I'm a darned sight more worried about that other one, th' Arizonabeauty which Courtrey's got in. "

"Forget th' gun man, Burt, " said Billy, "this feller's a heap moreinterestin' to me, for I've got a hunch he's a poet. Now who on thisfootstool but a poet would come ridin' into Lost Valley with his badgeo' beets an' his line o' talk about 'fringes o' pines' an' 'runnin'streams, ' to quote Tharon?"

"Even poets are human, you young limb, " drawled Curly in his softvoice, "an' I'm sorry for him if he starts your 'interest, ' so tospeak. He'll need all his poetic vision t' survive. "

"I hope, Billy, " said Tharon severely, and with lofty inconsistency, "that you'll remember your manners an' not start anything. Last's isin for trouble enough without any side issues. "

"True, " said the boy instantly, "I'll promise to leave th' poetalone. "

Then the talk fell about the new well that had taken the place of theold Crystal and which was proving a huge success. 

"Can't draw her dry, " said Bent Smith, "pulled all of three hours withNick Bob an' Blue Pine yesterday an' never even riled her. 

"She's good as th' Gold Pool or th' Silver Hollow now. "

"You're some range man t' make any such a comparison, " said Curly withconviction, "there ain't no artificial water-well extent that can holda candle t' th' real livin' springs of a cattle country, when they'resuch bubblin', shinin' beauties as th' Springs of Last's. "

"You're right, Curly, " said Tharon quietly from under the light, "there's nothin' like them. They must be th' blessin's of God, an' nomistake. They're th' stars at night, an' th' winds an' th' sunshine. They're th' lovers of th' horses, th' treasure of th' masters. I lovemy springs. "

"So do th' herds, " put in Jack Masters. "They'll come fast at nightnow because they can smell th' water far off, an' it's gettin' prettydry on th' range. "

"Yes, " sighed Tharon, "it's summer now, an' Jim Last died in spring. Awhole season gone. "

A whole season had gone, indeed, since that tragic night. 

Last's Holding had missed its master at each turn and point. Athousand times did Conford, the foreman, catch himself in the act ofgoing to the big room to find him at his desk, a big, vital force, intent on the accounts of the ranch, a thousand times did he long forhis keen insight. The _vaqueros_ missed him and his open hand. 

The very dogs at the steps missed him, and so did El Rey, waiting inhis corral for the step that did not come, the strong hand on hisbit. 

And how much his daughter missed him only the stars and the paleVirgin knew. 

For the next few days following the short, awkward visit of thestranger Tharon felt a prickle of uneasiness under her skin at everythought of it. There was something in the memory that confused anddistressed her, a feeling of failure, of a lack in her that put her ina bad light to herself. 

She knew that, instinctively, she had been protecting her own, thatsince Last's had stepped out in the light against Courtrey she musttake no chance. But should she have taken back the common courtesy ofthe offered meal? Would it not have been better to let him stay andmeet Conford who would have been in at noon?

She vexed herself a while with these questions, and then dismissedthem with her cool good sense. 

"It's done, " she told herself, "an' can't be helped. An' yet, therewas somethin' about him, somethin' that made me think of Jim Lasthimself--somethin' in his quiet eyes--as if they had both come fromsomewhere outside Lost Valley where they grow different men. It wasa--bigness, a softness. I don't know. "

And with that last wistful thought she forgot all about the incidentand the man, for the prediction of Jameson that dusk at the head ofRolling Cove became reality. 

Dixon, who lived north along the Wall near the Pomo settlement, lostten head of steers, all white and deeply earmarked, unmistakablecattle that could not be disguised. 

Courtrey was resenting the vague something in the air that wascrystallizing into resistance about him. 

Word of the stealing ran about the Valley like a grass fire, moreboldly than usual. 

It came to Last's in eighteen hours, brought by a horseman who hadcarried it to many a lonely homestead. 

Tharon received it with a thrill of joy. 

"Good enough, " she said, "no use wasting time. "

And she sent out a call for the thirty men. 

CHAPTER V

THE WORKING OF THE LAW

It was a clear, bright morning in early summer. All up and down LostValley the little winds wimpled the grass where the cattle grazed, andbrought the scent of flowers. In the thin, clear atmosphere points andlandmarks stood out with wonderful boldness. 

The homesteads set in the endless green like tiny gems, the stupendousface of the Wall, stretching from north to south and sheer as a plumbline for a thousand feet, was fretted with a myriad of tiny seams andcrevasses not ordinarily visible. 

Far up at the Valley's head against the huge uplift of the jumbled andbarren rocklands the scattered squat buildings of the Strongholdbrooded like a monster. 

Spread out on the velvet slopes below lay the herds that belonged toit, sleek fat cattle, guarded carelessly by a few lazy and desultoryriders. Courtrey was too secure in his insolent might to take thoserigid and untiring precautions which were the only price of safety tothe lesser men of the community. Toward the south where the Valleynarrowed to the Bottle Neck and the Broken Bend went out, thereshimmered and shone like a silver ribbon hung down the cliff the thin, long shower of Vestal's Veil fall. 

The roar of it could be heard for miles like the constant andincessant wail of winds in time-worn cañons. 

Along the floor of the Cup Rim range, sunken and hidden from the upperlevels, there rode a compact group of horsemen. They went abreast, incolumn of fours, and they were armed to the teeth, a bristlingpresentation. All in all there were forty-two of them and at theirhead rode Tharon on El Rey, a slim and gallant young figure. 

Her bright hair, tied with a scarlet ribbon, shone under her wide hatlike an aureole. She talked with Conford who rode beside her, and nowand then she smiled, for all the world as if she went to some youngfolks' gathering, instead of to the first uncertain issue of blind moblaw against outlaws. 

But if she felt a lightness of excitement in her heart it was morethan actuated by the grim and quiet band that followed. 

They knew--and she knew, also--that what they did this day, in theopen sunlight, meant savage strife and bloodshed for some as sure asdeath. 

For two hours they rode across the sunken range where the cottonwoodsand aspens made a lovely and mottled shade, to reach at last the sharpascent to the uplands above. When they topped the rim and startedforward, the huge herds of Courtrey lay spread before them, bright aspaint on the living green. Two thousand cattle grazed there in peaceand plenty. Here and there a rider sat his horse in idleness. At thefirst sight of the solidly formed mass coming out of the Cup Rim on tothe levels, these riders straightened in their saddles and rode incloser to their charges. 

The eyes of the newcomers went over the bright pattern of the grazingcattle. A motley bunch they were, red, black and white, with here andthere descendants of the yellows which none but John Dement had everowned in Lost Valley. Dement, riding near the head of the line sawthis and muttered in his beard. 

"Thar's some o' mine, " he said pointing, "th' very ones that wasstampeded. I'd know 'em in hell. "

[Illustration: SHE TALKED WITH CONFORD WHO RODE BESIDE HER AND NOW ANDTHEN SHE SMILED]

With the nearing of the line of horsemen a rider detached himself fromthe right of the herd and went sailing away across the levels towardthe distant Stronghold. 

Quick as a flash Tharon Last lifted the rifle that lay ready on herpommel and sent a shot whining toward him. 

"Just to show we mean business, " she muttered to herself. 

The cowboy caught the warning and drew his running horse up to slideten feet on its haunches. 

He had meant to warn his boss, but a chance was one thing, certaintyanother. 

"Dixon--Dement, " called Tharon rising in her stirrups, "when we get towork you pick out as near as you can, cattle that look like yours, an'th' same amount--not a head more. "

Then they swung forward at a run and swept down along the left flankof the herd. Here a rider raised his arm and fired point blank at theleaders. One-two-three his six-gun counted. He was a lean youngster, scarce more than a boy, a wild admirer of Courtrey, and he stood hisdefence with a sturdy gallantry that was worthy of a better cause. 

"Damn you!" he yelled, standing in his stirrups, "what's this?"

"Law!" pealed the high voice of Tharon as El Rey thundered down towardhim. Then Buford, riding midway of the sweeping line, fired and theboy dropped his gun, swayed and clung to his saddle horn as his horsebolted and tore off at a tangent to the right, away from the herd. 

"God!" cried the girl hoarsely, "I wish we didn't have to! Did youkill him?"

"No, " called Buford sharply, "broke his arm. "

Tharon, to whom the high blue vault had seemed suddenly to swing instrange circles, shut her teeth with a click. 

Abreast of the cattle she swerved El Rey aside, drew her guns andwaited. 

In among the grazing cattle, many of which had raised startled headsto eye the intruders, went the men. They worked swiftly and deftly. They knew that they were in plain sight of the Stronghold and expectedevery moment to see Courtrey and a dozen riders come boiling out. Those cowboys who had been in charge of the herd, sat where they were, without a move. Out of the bright mass the settlers cut first the tenhead of steers, as nearly as possible all white, to take the place ofDixon's band. Thomas and Black stood guard over them. Then they wentback and took out yellows and yellow-spotted to the number of onehundred. It was fast work, the fastest ever done on the Lost Valleyranges, and every nerve was strained like a singing wire. 

Under the dust cloud raised by the plunging hoofs, the whirlinghorses, the workers kept as close together as possible. 

They rounded up the cut-outs, bunched them together compactly andswinging into a half circle, drove them rapidly back toward theoak-fringed edge of the Cup Rim. They passed close to where the slimboy stood by his horse, trying to wind the big red kerchief from hisneck about his right arm from which the blood ran in a bright stream. Tharon swung out of her course and shot toward him. 

"Here, " she cried swiftly, "let me tie it. "

"To hell with you, " said the lad bitterly, raising blazing eyes to herface. "You've made me false t' Courtrey. I'd die first. "

"Die, then!" she flung back, "an' tell your master that th' law isworkin' in this Valley at last!"

As the last rider of the cavalcade went down over the slanting edge ofthe Cup Rim there came the sound of quick shots snapping in thedistance and the belated sight of riders streaming down from theStronghold hurried the descent. 

They had reached the level floor of the sunken range and spread outupon it for better travelling before Courtrey and his men, some ten orfifteen riders, appeared on the upper crest. 

The settlers stopped instantly at a call from Conford, drew togetherbehind the cattle, turned and faced them. They were too far away forspeech, out of rifle range, but the still, grim defiance of thatcompact front halted the outlaw cattle king and his followers. 

For the first time in all his years of rising power in Lost ValleyCourtrey felt a challenge. For the first time he knew that a tide wasbanking in full force against him. A red rage flushed up under hisdark skin, and he raised a silent fist and shook it at the blueheavens. 

The grim watchers below knew that gesture, significant, majestic, boded ill to them. 

But Tharon Last, muttering to herself in the hatred that possessed herof late at sight of Courtrey, raised her own doubled fist and shook ithigh toward him, an answer, an acceptance of that challenge. 

Then they calmly turned and drove the recovered cattle down along thesloping levels at a fast trot. 

The die was struck. Lost Valley was no longer a stamping-ground forwrong and oppression. It had gone to war. 

That night the white and yellow herd bedded at the Holding, _vaqueros_rode about it all night long, quietly, softly under the stars. Thesettlers walked about, smoking, or sat silently in the darkenedliving room. At midnight Tharon and young Paula made huge pots ofcoffee which they dispensed along with crullers. 

By dawn the cattle were well on their way, still safeguarded by theband of men, down toward the homesteads where they belonged. 

During that night of unlighted silence plans had been perfected in lowvoices, a name chosen for the band itself. They would call themselvesthe Vigilantes, as many another organization had called itself in thedesperate straits that made its existence imperative. 

By sundown the hundred head had been driven, hot and tired, into JohnDement's corrals, the ten white steers were bedded by Black's Springover toward the Wall. They had farther to go and would not reachDixon's until the morning. 

And with each band there was a group of determined men. 

 * * * * *

Word of this exploit ran all over the Valley in a matter of hours. Toeach faction it had a deep significance. 

But speech concerning it was sparse as it had ever been anent thedoings of Courtrey. A man's tongue was a prisoner to his common sensethose days. 

To Tharon Last, busy at her tasks about the Holding, it was a vitalmatter. She felt a strong surge, an uplift within her. She had begunthe task she had set herself and solemn joy pervaded her being. 

But of all those whom it affected there was none to whom it meant whatit did to Courtrey himself. In him it set loose something which burnedin him like a consuming fire. Where he had thought of Tharon Lastbefore with a certain intent, now he thought of her in a sort ofmadness. He was a king himself, in a manner, an eagle, a prowler ofgreat spaces, a rule-or-ruin force. Down there on the sloping floor ofthe Cup Rim had been a fit mate for him in the slim girl who hadshaken her fist back at him in strong defiance. 

He felt his blood leap hot at the thought of her. She was built offighting stuff. No pale willy-nilly, like some he knew who wept wholefountains daily. No--neither was she like Lola of the Golden Cloud, past-master of men because she had belonged to many. 

Courtrey, who had run life's gamut himself, thought of Tharon Last'sstraight young purity with growing desire. 

It began to obsess him with a mania. His temper, bad at all times, became worse. Ellen, the veriest slave through her devotion to him, found her life at the Stronghold almost unbearable. 

She was a white woman, like a lily, with transparent flesh where theblue veins showed. Her pale blue eyes, like the painted eyes of achina doll, were red with constant tears under their corn-silk lashes. The pale gold hair on her temples was often damp with the sweat thatcomes with agony of soul. 

"It jes' seems I can't live another minute, Cleve, " she would tell herbrother who lived at the Stronghold, "seems like I don't want to. Th'very sunlight looks sad t' me, an' I hate th' tree-toads that aresingin' eternal down in th' runnel. "

This brother, her only relative, would stir uneasily at such times andthe fire that shot from his eyes, light, too, under the same corn-silklashes, was a rare thing. Nothing but this had ever set it burning. Hewas a slight man, narrow-chested and thin. They had been from run-downstock, these two, a strain that seemed indigenous to the Valley, without other memories. Their name was Whitmore, and they had livedall their lives in a poor cove up beyond the Valley's head where thebarren rocklands came down out of the skies. There had been, besidesthemselves, only the father and mother, worn-out workers, who haddied at last, leaving the brother and sister to live as best theymight in the solitudes. 

Here Courtrey had found them, both in their teens, and he had promptlytaken them both along with their scant affairs. It was about the onlything to his credit that he had married Ellen, hard and fast enough, with the offices of a bona fide justice, a matter which he hadregretted often enough in the years that followed. 

It was this knowledge which set the light burning in Cleve's eyes. 

He knew how Ellen loved Courtrey. 

He knew also that Lola of the Golden Cloud had made the cattle kingstep lively for over a year. He saw the daily growing impatience withwhich Courtrey regarded his marriage. 

He resented with every ounce of the repressed spirit there was in himthe girl's poor standing at the Stronghold. 

Black Bart and Wylackie Bob treated her with no more considerationthan any of the Indian serving women. They swore and drank before herwith an abandon that made the young man's nails cut deep in his palmsat times, the blood mount high in his white cheeks. 

And Ellen drooped like a lily on a broken stem, brooded over herhusband's absences, and hated the name of Lola, used openly to her asa cruel joke. 

The Stronghold was a huge place. The house was like the majority ofthe habitations of the region, built of adobe and able to stand siegeagainst a regiment. It was shaded by cottonwoods and spruces, flankedby corrals and barns and sheds until the place resembled a smalltown. 

Cleve Whitmore rode for Courtrey but his heart was not in Courtrey'sgame. He was slim and sullen, dissatisfied, slow of speech, repressed. 

He worked early and late and thought a lot. 

Courtrey, who kept close count of the favours he did for others, considered Cleve deep in his debt and paid him a niggardly wage. So itwas, that when the newly organized Vigilantes under Tharon Last cameout in broad day and took back their own from Courtrey's herds, therewas one at the Stronghold who laughed quietly to himself in sympathywith the defy. 

"Good enough, " he told the wide sky and the silence as he rode herdunder the beetling rocklands, "hope t' God some one gits him good an'plenty. "

But Courtrey was hard to get. His aides and lieutenants were pickedmen. He was like a king in his domain. 

But if strife and ferment seethed under the calm surface in LostValley, its surges died before they reached the rolling slopes wherethe forests came down to the eastern plains. Up among the pines andoaks, the ridges and the age-worn, tumbled rocks David Kenset hadfound his ideal spot, his glade where the pines stood guard and atalking stream ran down. High on the wooded slopes he had set hismark, begun that home of which he had told Tharon. From Corvan he hadhired three men, a teamster by the name of Drake and his two sons, andtogether they had felled and dressed trees enough for a cabin, laidthem up with clay brought five miles on mule-back, roofed thestructure with shakes made on the spot with a froe, and the result waspleasing, indeed, to this man straight from the far eastern cities. 

The cabin faced southwest, set at an angle to command the circledglade, the dropping slopes, the distant range lands, the wooded lineof the Broken Bend, and farther off the levels and slants of thegently undulating Valley, with the mighty Rockface of the Wall risinglike a mystery beyond. Kenset cut all trees at the west and south ofthe glade, thus forming a splendid doorway into his retreat, throughwhich all this shone in, like those wonderful etched landscapes onesometimes sees in tiny toys that fit the narrowed eye. 

Before the cabin was finished, Starret, who ran the regularpack-train, brought in a string of trunks and boxes which caused muchcurious comment in Corvan. These came up, after much delay, to bedumped in the door yard of the house in the glade, and Kenset felt asif the gateway to the outside world might close and he care verylittle. 

Here was the wilderness, in all verity, here was work, that greatestof boons, here were health and plenty and the hazard of outlawry, thathe was beginning to dimly sense under the calmly flowing currents ofLost Valley. 

And here was Romance, as witness the slim girl who had backed out froma group of men that first day of his coming--backed out with her gunsupon them, himself included, and mounted a silver stallion, whose likehe had not known existed. In fact, Kenset had thought he knew horses, but he stood in open-mouthed wonder before the horses of LostValley--the magnificent Ironwood bays of Courtrey's, with theirwonderful long manes and tails that shone like a lady's hair, theFinger Marks which he had seen once or twice, and marvelled at. 

With the opening of the boxes the cabin in the glade took on a look ofhome, of individuality. A big dark rug, woven of strong cord in greenand brown, came out and went down on the rough floor, leather runnerswere flung on the two tables, a student lamp of nickel, a pair of oldcandlesticks in hammered brass, added their touch of gleam and shineto table and shelf-above-the-hearth, college pennants, in all thecolours of the rainbow, were hung about the walls between four fineprints in sepia, gay cushions, much the worse for wear, landed in thehandsome chairs, and lastly, but far from being least, three longshelves beneath the northern windows were filled to the last inch withbooks. 

When all these things had been put in place Kenset stood back andsurveyed the room with a smile in his dark eyes. 

"Some spot, " he said aloud, "some spot!"

On the small table that was to do duty as a desk in the corner betweenthe southwest window and the fireplace he stacked neatly a mass ofliterature, all marked with the same peculiar shield of the pine treesand the big U. S. That shone always on his breast. 

To the Drakes these things were of quick interest, but they asked noquestions. 

When the last thing had been done to the cabin they set to work andbuilt a smaller cabin for the good brown horse which Kenset had boughtfar down to the south and west in the Coast Country, for Sam Draketold him that Lost Valley locked its doors to all the world in winter. He would house his only friend as he housed himself. 

When the Drakes, father and sons, were gone back down to Corvan forgood, Kenset stretched himself, physically and mentally, and began hislife in the last frontier. 

He began to be out from dawn to dark riding the ridges, exploring thewooded slopes, the boldly upsweeping breasts of the namelessmountains, making friends with the rugged land. It was a beautifulcountry, hushed and silent, save for the soft song of the pines, thelaughter of streams that ran to the Valley, cold as snow and clear aswind. Strange flowers nodded on tall stems in glade and opening, peeped from the flat earth by stone and moss-bed. Few birds were here, though squirrels were plentiful. 

Sometimes he saw a horseman sitting on some slant watching himintently. These invariably rode rapidly away on being discovered, nottroubling to return his salute of a hand waved high above him. 

"Funny tribe, " he told himself, half puzzled, half irritated, "theirmanners seem to be peculiarly their own. As witness the offered mealso calmly 'taken back' by the young highway-woman of Last'sHolding. "

That had rankled. Sane as Kenset was, as cool and self-contained, hecould not repress a cold prickle of resentment at that memory. 

He had gone to the Holding in such good faith, actuated by a livelydesire to see Tharon again after that one amazing meeting at Baston'ssteps, and he had been so readily received at first, so coolly turnedout at last. But he had not forgotten the look in the girl's blueeyes, nor the disarming smile which had seemed to make it reasonable. 

She merely did not hold with law, and wanted him to have no falseimpressions. This incident furnished him with more food for thoughtthan he was aware of in those first long days when he rode the silentforest. 

What was Tharon Last, anyway? What did she mean by those words of hersabout his law and hers? That they were not the same sort of law--thathe and she would not agree?

They could not be friends, she had said. 

Well, Kenset was not so sure of that. There was something about thisgirl of the guns that sent a thrill tingling in his blood already, made him recall each expression of her speaking face, each line of herlean young figure. 

He did not go near Last's again, though his business took him far andby in the Valley, for the big maps, hung on a rack beyond hisfireplace, covered full half the ranges thereof and stretched awayinto the mysterious and illimitable forests that went up and away intothe eastern mountains. 

It was as if some fateful Power at Washington had set down a carelessfinger on a map of the U. \S. \A. , and said to Kenset, "Here is yourcountry, " without knowledge or interest. Sometimes he wondered ifthere was another forest in the land as utterly lost as this, aslittle known. 

But with this wonder came a thrill. He had read romances of the greatWest in his youth and felt a vague regret that he had not lived in therollicking days of '49. Now as he rode his new domain he smiled tohimself and thought that out of a modern college he had been set backhalf a century. Here was the rule of might, if he was not mistaken. Here was romance in its most vital and appealing form. Yes, he felthimself lucky. 

So he took up his life and his duties with a vim. He rode early andlate, took notes and gathered data for his first reports, and set upfor himself in Lost Valley a spreading antagonism. 

If he rode herd on the range lands, the timber sections, there werethose who rode herd on him. Not a movement of his that was notreported faithfully to Courtrey, not a coming or going that was notwatched from start to finish. 

And the cattle king narrowed his eyes and listened to his lieutenantswith growing disapproval. 

"Took up land, think?" he asked Wylackie Bob. "Homesteadin'?"

Wylackie shook his head. 

"Ain't goin' accordin' to entry, " he said, "no more'n th' cabin. Don'tsee no signs of tillin'. He ain't fencin', nor goin' to fence, as nearas I can find out. "

"Cattle?"

"No. Nor horses. "

"Hogs, then?"

"No. "

"Damn it! maybe it's sheep!" and the red flush rose in the bully'sdark cheeks. 

"Don't think so. Seems like he's after somethin', but what it is Ican't make out. "

But it was not long before the Stronghold solved the mystery, forKenset rode boldly in one day and introduced himself. 

It was mid-afternoon, for the cabin in the glade lay a long way fromthe Valley's head, and the whole big place lay silent as death in thesummer sun. 

The Indian serving women were off in the depths somewhere, the few_vaqueros_ left at home were out about the spreading corrals, and allthe men that counted at the ranch had ridden into Corvan early in theday. 

Only Ellen, pale as a flower, her sweet mouth drooping, sat listlesslyon the hard beaten earth at the eastern side of the squat house wherethe spruce trees grew, her hands folded in her lap, a sunbonnetcovering the golden mass of her hair. 

At the sound of his horse's hoofs on the stone-flagged yard Kenset sawher start, half rise, fling a startled look at him and then sink back, as if even the advent of a stranger was of slight import in the heavycurrent of her dull life. 

He came in close, drew up, and, with his hat in his hand, sat smilingdown at her. To Kenset it was more natural to smile than not to. 

The girl, for she was scarce more, looked up at him and he saw atonce, even under the disfiguring headgear, that here was a breakingheart laid open for all eyes. The very droop and tremble of the lipswere proof. 

"Mrs. Courtrey?" he asked gently. 

At the words, the smile, the unusual courtesy of the removed hat, Ellen rose from her chair, a tall, slim wisp of a woman, whoseblue-veined hands were almost transparent. 

"Yes, " she said, and waited. 

That little waiting, calm, unruffled, made him think sharply ofTharon Last who had waited also for his accounting for himself. 

"I am Kenset, " he said, "of over in the foothills. Is your husband athome?"

"No, " said Ellen, "he's gone in t' Corvan. "

There was a world of meaning in the inflection. 

"Yes? Now that's too bad. It's taken me a long time to come and Iparticularly wished to see him. Do you mind if I wait?"

"Why, no, " said Ellen a bit reluctantly, "no, sir, I guess not. "

Kenset swung off the brown horse and dropped the rein. 

"Tired, Captain?" he asked whimsically, rubbing the sweaty mane, whilethe animal drew a long whistling breath and in turn rubbed the stickybrow band on its forehead on Kenset's arm. 

"Looks like he's thirsty, " said Ellen presently. "There's a troughround yonder at th' back, " and she waved a long hand. 

Kenset led Captain around back where a living spring sang and gurgledinto a section of tree, deeply hollowed and covered with moss. 

When he came back to the shade the woman had brought from some nearplace a second chair, and he dropped gratefully into it, weary fromhis long ride. 

He laid his hat on the earth beside him and smoothed the sleek, darkhair back from his forehead. 

Ellen sat still and watched him with a steady gaze. 

She was finding him strange. She looked at his olive drab garments, atthe trim leather leggings that encased his lower limbs, at his smoothhands, at his face, and lastly at the dark shield on his breast. 

"Law?" she asked succinctly. 

"Well, " smiled Kenset, "after a fashion. "

She moved uneasily in her chair, and the man had a sudden feeling ofpity for her. 

"Not as you mean, Mrs. Courtrey, " he hastened. "I am in the UnitedStates Forest Service, if you know what that is. "

"No, " said Ellen, "I don't know. "

"It is simply a service for the conservation of the timber of thiscountry, " he explained gently, but he saw that he was not making itclear. 

"The saving of the trees, " he went on, "the care of the forests. "

"Oh, " she said, relieved. 

"We look after the ranges, protect the woods from fire, and so on. "

"Look after th' ranges? How?"

"Regulate grazing, grant permits. "

"Permits?"

"Yes. " And seeing that at last he had caught her interest, Kensettalked quietly for an hour and told her more than he had vouchsafedany other in Lost Valley about his work. 

Gradually, however, he fell to talking to amuse her, for he saw theemptiness behind the big blue eyes, the aching void which there wasnothing to fill, neither love nor hope. 

As the sun sank lower toward the west Ellen took off the atrocity ofcalico and starch, and he saw with wonder the amazing beauty of herropes of hair. 

When he ceased talking the silence became profound, for she hadnothing to say and speech did not come easy to her anyway. He did notknow that at the windows and behind the door-jambs of the deep oldhouse were clustered almost a dozen dusky women and children, drawnfrom all over the place and listening in utter silence. 

Unconsciously he had drifted back to his life in the outside world, encouraged by the absorbing interest of the pale eyes that never lefthis face. He told Ellen of boat races on the Hudson, of theatres onBroadway, of college pranks and frolics, ranged over half thecontinent in little story and snatch of description. 

Neither one noticed how the shadows were lengthening, nor that thesun had dropped in majesty behind the mighty Wall. 

It took the sound of running horses, many of them coming up along theslopes, to bring Kenset back to the present with a snap, to make thewoman reach swiftly for the bonnet and clap it on her head. 

"Mrs. Courtrey, " said Kenset hurriedly, "this has been the first realtalk I have had with any of my neighbours, and I want to thank you forit. "

"Oh, " quavered the woman, "I don't know as I'd ought to a-let youstayed! Mebby I'd oughtn't. But--but seems like you bein' sodifferent, an' I not seein' no one, come day in day out, w'y I--I--"

"Sure, " he returned quickly, understanding. "You did just right. Iwanted to stay. "

Then he rose to his feet and there came the thunder of the horses, thenoise of men stopping from a run, dismounting. 

Ellen rose and he followed her around the corner of the house to thedoor yard. 

As they waited, Courtrey, clad in dark leather chaps, his gunsswinging, came toward them. At sight of Kenset he stopped short and anoath rolled from his lips. The kerchief at his neck was turnedknot-back and hung like a glob of crimson blood upon his breast. 

Under his hat, set at an angle, his dark hair fluffed strangely. 

He was a splendid figure of a man, broad shouldered, slim hipped. 

Now he looked hard at the stranger and a slow grin lifted his upperlip. 

"What's this?" he said, and there was a light suspicion of thicknessin his voice, "my wife got com-ny?"

Kenset heard the woman catch her breath, and the feeling of pity thathad taken him at first for her intensified. 

"No, Mr. Courtrey, " he said advancing, "but you have, " and he held outhis hand. "I'm Kenset, from the foothills. "

Courtrey, not four feet from him, did not look at the hand. Insteadthe glittering eyes under the hat-brim looked steadily into his withan expression that only one man in a hundred could have interpreted. 

That one man, however, stood by the watering trough, his hand on theneck of a drinking horse--Cleve Whitmore who watched Courtrey withoutblinking. 

For a moment Kenset stood so, his hand extended, waiting. Then thecolour rose in his face and he drew back the hand, raised it, scrutinized it smilingly, and put it quietly on his hip. 

Still smiling he raised his eyes again to Courtrey's face. 

"Courtrey, " he said, this time without the Mr. , "I've come to LostValley to _stay_. I had hoped to be friends with all my neighbours. Itwould have made my work easier. However, with or without, I stay. "

And he picked up his hat, set it on his head, walked over to the brownhorse, flung up the rein, mounted and rode out of the Stronghold inutter silence. 

His face was flaming, the blood of outraged dignity and deep angerbeat in his temples like a drum. As he rode farther away he heard theembarrassing silence broken by the hoarse shouts of laughter of halfdrunken men. 

"Go to it, " he said aloud, clinching his fists on his saddle horn, "this is part of my duty. The Big Chief was right when he said, 'Ifyou help the Service to tame Lost Valley you've got your work cutout. ' It's a man-size job. I mustn't doubt my ability. "

CHAPTER VI

EL REY AND BOLT

Tharon Last and all her followers held themselves in readiness foranything in the days that followed the taking of the herds fromCourtrey's range. 

They locked their doors at night, stood double guard at corral andstable. Mothers scattered throughout Lost Valley gathered in theirlittle ones and watched the slopes and levels when their men wereout. 

But a strange quietness seemed to settle down upon them. That forwhich they waited did not materialize. Courtrey and his gun men rodeinto Corvan and up and down the Valley on mysterious missions whichwere as unsettling as open depredations, but nothing happened. Infact, Courtrey, burning with the new desire that was beginning toobsess him, was working out a new design. 

He began to draw away from Lola. His triweekly visits to the GoldenCloud dropped off a bit. He took to drifting about from saloon tosaloon, to being less pronounced in his frequenting of one or twoplaces. 

His cold eyes, however, set in their narrow slits beneath the heavybrows, picked out every settler that he met and promised vague thingsfor the future. He knew to a man who had ridden up from Last's thatday, and he meant that not one should escape full payment--some time. Now he thought of the girl who had defied him and he waited withleaping pulse. The memory of that kiss, taken by violence at herwestern door, was with him night and day. She stood for right and thedignity of order. He meant, for a time, to play her hand. 

Therefore the settlers waited, and held their breath while they didso. 

And Courtrey took to riding much more alone, to watching the slopesand stretches with a hand at his hat-brim, shading his keen eyes. Helooked far and wide in the golden summer land for the sight of asilver horse cutting down the wind with a slim girl in saddle. 

But Tharon was busy at the Holding and El Rey stamped and whistled inhis paddock. The mistress knew that she had set stern tides flowing inthe Valley, that sooner or later they were due to sweep away the peaceand quiet that pervaded the cottonwoods and the singing springs. Sheknew that Courtrey waited, but she made the most of that waiting. 

Conford and Billy and the rest of the riders made strong bolts for allthe doors of the house, reinforced the fences that held the herds atnight, put trick locks on all the gates. 

But the time came when the close retreat became irksome to the girl, and she went from room to room in an uneasiness that was foreign toher calm and happy nature. She read over and over the two or three oldbooks that had been at the Holding since she could remember, made newcovers for the tables in the living room, kept the hands of the Virginfull of fresh offerings. But these things staled. 

She began to long for the distances, the open spaces, the feel of theswooping stallion under her sailing down the wind. Courtrey or noCourtrey, she could not fight it down. So, on a golden day when allthe boys were out with the herds and only the Indian _vaqueros_ leftin charge by Conford were at the stables, she flung the big saddlewith its silver studs and its sombre stain on El Rey, mounted and wentout and away like the wind itself. Not since the day of the raid onCourtrey's stolen herds had she been on El Rey's back and the firstlong leap and drop of the great horse beneath her set the lights tosparkling in her eyes, the blood to burning in her golden cheeks. Shelay low on his neck and let him run, and her heart leaped up withlightness as it ever did when she rode in these thundering bursts. 

[Illustration: IN FACT COURTREY, BURNING WITH THE NEW DESIRE THAT WASBEGINNING TO OBSESS HIM, WAS WORKING OUT A NEW DESIGN]

There was no other horse in Lost Valley like the great king! NeitherRedbuck nor Golden nor Drumfire! Neither Sweetheart nor Westwind! No, nor any Ironwood Bay that came down from Courtrey's Stronghold, Boltand Arrow not excepted. 

Tharon laughed and stroked the king's neck, thewed like steel beneathher hands. She had no fear of Courtrey and his hired killers. Sooneror later the issue would come, of course. Then she would kill the manas she had promised Jim Last, without a thought. 

Nay, she thought of Ellen, fragile white flower, of whom she hadheard. 

A softening came about her young mouth at thought of her, a shadowflickered in her blue eyes for a moment. Then it was gone and shelaughed, a whooping gale of joy, there alone in the green stretchesbetween the earth and sky, with the note of El Rey's speed steadilyrising in her ears. 

It beat in her very heart, that singing note. She loved the king asshe loved nothing else on earth, save only the memory of her father. 

She went south toward the Black Coulee and she thanked her stars thather riders were grazing the herds north toward the Cup Rim. Here therewas none to say her nay, to urge her with loving solicitude to goback. 

The miles sped backward and she scarce noted their travel. She drewthe king down a bit, slowed him from the swooping run, set him intothe wonderful rock-and-away of the singlefoot and retied the ribbon onher hair. She wore no hat this day and the tawny cloud of her hairfluffed back from her forehead, straining at its bands, its loose endsstanding up like fairy stuff all over her head. So, with her two armsheld high above her and the reins in her teeth, she rode down by themouth of Black Coulee--and up from the depths of the rugged wash thatsplit the plain for seven miles there came across her path a man on agreat bay horse. 

Courtrey on Bolt! She knew the beautiful animal even so far away. Itdid not need the challenging toss of El Rey's head, the piercingscream that rang from his open mouth across the silence, nor thesudden lunge and strain against the bit. 

That was Bolt, the mighty, and no mistake. None but Arrow carried hissplendid head so regally, _none_ other bore so huge a cloud of mane onhis arching neck, so long a tail that spread like a fan between hisknees and almost swept the ground. 

So, Courtrey came out of the Coulee to meet her! He would, maybe, force the issue. But Tharon was not ready for that. What was plainkilling? No, she wanted more than that. She wanted to see him scourgedand beaten, humiliated and robbed as he had robbed Lost Valley. 

So she turned El Rey, though it took the whole strength of her youngarms, and headed him back the way they had come. With the first turnand straightening leap her heart thumped hard against her ribs. 

There, between her and the Holding, far distant, there were tworiders--and they rode bay horses, both!

She made no doubt that they were Wylackie Bob and Black Bart, on Arrowand Slingshot. 

A sudden mist of fear came across her eyes. A tightening caught herthroat. She looked around the illimitable spaces that stretched awayon all sides. There was nothing in all the spreading plains but thethree riders, sprung from nowhere, it seemed, and herself. 

Courtrey came rapidly up toward her, swinging a bit to the west. Theothers, set somewhat apart to right and left, bore down upon her. Itlooked very much as if they meant to ride her down to the BlackCoulee. 

Once in its sheltering deep wash she would be helpless, cut off fromescape. The Black Coulee went back into the eastern hills, lost itselfup in the rugged and torturous clefts and chasms that cut the unknownramparts, dark with forest and mysterious. 

No! Not the Black Coulee and Courtrey to take her prisoner!

She looked this way and that. Then she saw that toward her right shehad some margin. There was space there to swing away from the man infront who came like the wind itself toward her. She caught the seemingof great speed and her heart leaped again. 

She recalled the day she had asked Jack Masters if Bolt could run likeEl Rey. 

"How do I know?" he had answered. "I know it was speed, an' that isall. " True enough. It was Bolt, coming like his namesake, down alongthe sloping stretches. 

But a great wave of exultation swept over her. She rose in herstirrups, shook an insulting hand above her, dropped on El Rey's neck, swerved him east and swept away toward the lifting skirts of thewooded hills. She heard a yell behind her, glanced back and saw thatthe three Ironwoods were sweeping behind her, closing in together. Itwas to be a race at last!

At last the whispered comparisons that had stirred under the speech ofthe Valley concerning the Ironwoods and the Finger Marks was to havejustification. For the first and only time, in her knowledge, theywere to run. 

"All right!" cried Tharon aloud. "Come on, you bastards! It's the kingyou come against an' Jim Last's blood! You'll never put a hand oneither. "

She struck her heels into El Rey's flanks, leaned over her pommel, wished she was on the king's bare back, reached her hands far outalong the reins and began to call in his ear. 

"Yeeoo! Yeeoo! Yeeoo!" she cried, a high, exciting note that keened inthe singing wind. And El Rey, ever keen to run for no reason, findinghimself called upon, stretched out his great body, dropped low toearth and began to run. The wind cut by Tharon's face like a knife inthe first few leaps. 

It shut her eyes in a dozen. She rode and laughed with a half sob inher throat. The thunder of the king's iron-shod hoofs was in her earslike the roar of the spring freshets when the empty cañons pouredtheir temporary torrents down the Rockface into the Valley. 

She knew he was running as she had never ridden before. She had nevercalled upon him before. It was like being adrift upon the wind. Sheheard the note of his speed rising in her ears. It was as it had everbeen, save that it was a higher note, thinner, sharper. There wasscarce a sense of touch beneath her, a lack of jar, of vibration, soevenly and smoothly did the shining hoofs take the grassy plain. 

Tears were in her eyes. Laughter was on her lips. This was speedindeed! She had a sick longing that Jim Last might see his two lovedones go!

Then she gathered herself to turn her head across her leaning shoulderand look back. 

As her eyes swept into focus behind, the laughter slipped off her lipsas if wiped by an invisible hand. 

There, the same distance away as when they started, rode Courtrey!

No farther away!

Bolt, shining in the sun, was keeping pace with El Rey!

Farther back--a little farther back--was Arrow, running magnificently, too. 

A greater distance behind the two came Slingshot. 

Tharon was frightened. Not for herself. Not for the intent of the menwho came after her. Not for gun-fire, nor for capture. 

She was afraid for the king! Afraid that Bolt could hold thatwonderful pace! Then a surging rage rose and sickened her. 

She leaned down again and called once more into the stallion's ear andonce more the note rose a notch. She felt that great pulsing seemingof reserve. Always when she called there was the answer. The plainswam beneath her like a blur. The thunder of the king's hoofs was asingle note also. 

Then Tharon raised her eyes and saw that she had left the open landbehind. The mountains were rising swiftly before, she was sweeping uptheir skirts. Trees flew by. She heard the singing of waters. Theforests seemed to come down out of the skies to meet her, dark, forbidding. 

She felt a sense of disaster, of helplessness. Where was she going, she and El Rey, with her enemies behind and coming fast? What was tobe the end of the race? And then, all suddenly, the woods seemed tofall away on either side, a gateway to open up before her. A lovelyopen glade spread into the heart of the forest and the great kingthundered in between the guarding pines. Like a silver flame he shotup the sloping floor, slowed, changed and came to stop before a cabinthat sat securely at the glade's head. 

With the crashing pound of El Rey's ploughing hoofs upon the verystones at the step, a man came quickly from the interior of the cabinand stepped out, his hand lifted. 

Tharon Last, her hair beating on her shoulders, her face pale asashes, her breast heaving, looked back toward the opening in thetrees, and saw Courtrey swing in a wide arc and circle past todisappear toward the north. 

After him swept his two lieutenants, to fade swiftly from sight behindthe shielding forest. 

A grim expression spread over the face of the man at the step as he, too, beheld the end of the vital play. 

Then he looked up at the girl on the silver stallion and his dark eyeswere alight. 

"What's this?" he asked abruptly. 

Then Tharon seemed to become conscious of him for the first time. 

She looked down at him and the black pupils were spread across theazure of her eyes, making them strangely exciting in their straightglance. 

"This, " she said, panting, "is some of the law of Lost Valley. Courtrey's law. That is the man I'm goin' to kill some day. "

Kenset felt the blood flow back upon his heart, an icy flood. Thewords were simple, sincere, unconscious of dramatic effect. They wereas final as death itself, and he dropped his eyes unconsciously to thetwo guns at her hips. He wondered why she had ridden without a shotthis time. 

He found his lips suddenly dry and moistened them before he spoke. 

"Why?" he asked, and his voice sounded strange to him. 

"Because, " said Tharon simply, "because he kissed me--once--an' shotmy daddy--in th' back, th' hound!"

"God!" said Kenset

For a moment there was silence while a bird called sharply from a pinetop and the voice of the little stream became subtly audible. 

It seemed to the man that all his values of life had suddenly becomeshifted, changed. The commonplace had become the unreal, the unlikelythe familiar. 

Guns and threats and racing horses with a woman for prize became onthe moment natural events in this hidden setting. 

And what a woman she was! He looked up in her face again and saw theresweetness and strength, and grim purpose beyond his conception. Heknew that her words were downright, and that they meant no more to herthan duty to be done, a conscience cleared of debt. He glanced at thehand lying so quietly on the pommel and thought of it as stained withblood. At the fancy he frowned and mentally shook himself. 

Then, with an impulse wholly beyond his command, he reached up andlaid his own hand over that one on the pommel. 

"Miss Last, " he said gravely, "I have no words to express what I feelthis moment about Lost Valley and its people. Will you get down andlet me show you my house, here in my glade?"

Tharon sat quietly for a moment and looked down at him. She did notremove her hand from under his, neither did she seem to be consciousof it. 

"Why should I?" she asked presently, "you don't owe me anything. Isent you away from my house. I wouldn't have come here if I'd knownwhere I was goin'. It was a chance. "

"Granted. And yet I want you to come across my threshold, to sit in mybig chair. Will you come?"

Never in her life had the girl heard so low a voice. It was soft andgentle, yet full of a vibrant quality that belied its softness. Theman himself was unlike Lost Valley men. He wore the olive drabtrousers of the semi-military uniform, the leather leggings, a tanleather belt and a soft woolen shirt of the same drab color. It layopen at the throat, and the base of his strong neck was white as awoman's. The dark eyes upturned to hers were deep and winning. Thedark beard showed through his sharply shaven cheeks where the redblood pulsed, like dusky shadows. 

A strange man, surely. 

Tharon wondered what made him so different from other men she hadknown. There was Billy who had come into Lost Valley from somewhere"below, " and Conford, and Curly. Jack Masters had been born in theValley. So had Bent Smith. These men were her men, like herself andJim Last. This man was from "below, " too, yet he was unlike. 

While she studied him he met her glance with the same grave look. 

Presently, without a word, she swung herself from the saddle, droppedEl Rey's rein, and stepped around his shoulder. 

"All right, " she said briefly, "but I won't stay any longer than I letyou stay. "

For the first time Kenset laughed. 

"Twenty minutes, then, " he said, "I don't think you let me exceed thatlimit. "

He led the way to the door, stepped back and let her enter. As she didso she passed close to him and caught the scent of him, the cleansoft smell of shaving soap, blended with the aroma of good tobacco. 

That, too, was different. 

Inside the cabin there was a sense of comfort, of brightness. The longpennants, like captured rainbows, tacked to the rough walls, the softtoned prints, the gay cushions, all these lent an air of permanence, of home, that she had never before seen in a man's cabin. She stoodand looked all around with that same half-insolent stare which hadgreeted Kenset at the Holding that memorable day. 

Then she went slowly forward and sat down in the big chair by thetable. 

The man stood in her presence for a moment, thereby giving a subtleeffect of deference which was not wholly lost upon Tharon, though shewould have been at a loss to define it. 

Then, he, too, sat down on the edge of the table desk in the corner, and with folded arms waited while she finished her scrutiny of theinterior. 

"I am proud of my home, Miss Last, " he said presently. "What do youthink of it?"

"I think, " said Tharon slowly, "that it looks like there's a womansomewhere. "

This time Kenset laughed in earnest, a ringing peal that startled ElRey at the doorstep, and made him clink his bit-chains. 

"There is, " said the man, "assuredly. "

Tharon turned her head and looked quickly over her shoulder. 

"Where?" she asked in surprise. 

"There in my big chair. "

"Oh--I meant a woman livin' here, th' woman who owns the pretties. "

And she waved a hand at the gay furnishings. 

"No, " said Kenset, "these are all my own pretties. I have books, asyou see, and my maps and several more pictures to put up, not tomention some Mexican pottery that I brought from Ciudad Juarez, and mychiefest treasure, a tapestry from France. That last I can't decideupon. I have two splendid spaces--over there between the northernwindows, facing the door, and yonder at the end. Perhaps you will begood enough to help me choose. "

There was a boyish eagerness in his voice. 

"Will you? After a while, I mean, when you have rested from yourride. "

"Rested?"

Tharon looked at him in wonder. That ride had been like wine to her, astimulant, a thing that sent the blood pounding in her veins. 

Over the excitement had fallen a subtle shade, however, a hush, withthe sight of Bolt so close behind El Rey. If it had not been for thatgrave thing she would have felt like a wound-up spring, intent withenergy, filled with action. She was always so when El Rey ran beneathher. And this stranger spoke of rest! Tharon Last could ride all daywithout a thought of rest. 

"Sure, " she said, "I'll help you if I can. But what's this thing?"

"A sort of picture, " replied Kenset quickly, "a picture woven incloth. But first, if you'll be so kind, I want you to break bread withme. You said we would not be friends. I'm not so sure of that. Thereis nothing like a man's bread and salt for the refutation of logic. "

He slipped off the desk with a lithe rippling of his body, but Tharonwas first on her feet. 

"You mean stay to supper?" she asked decisively. "No, I can't do that. I took back a meal from you. That stan's between. "

"Why, you funny girl, " said Kenset, "nothing stands between. And Idon't mean supper, exactly, either. Please sit down. "

Tharon stood, considering. She turned the matter over in her mind. 

She had taken this man's house by storm. It had, indeed, given herrefuge. If it had not been for the glade in the pines, she wonderedwhere she would be now--driven deep into Black Coulee, she made nodoubt, a prisoner to Courtrey. 

"All right, " she said abruptly, "I'll stay. But you must be quick. Th'time is goin' fast. "

Kenset went swiftly across the cabin to that part which served askitchen, and took from a curtain-covered set of shelves, a shinynickel object on spindly legs, which he brought and placed near Tharonon the table. 

He struck a match and presently a clean blue flame grew up beneathit. 

He lifted the lid and filled the small pot, thereby exposed, withwater from the bucket on a bench. Then he delved in one of the bigtrunks against the farther wall and brought out a little tin of cakes, such as one could buy in any city of the world. 

All this was absorbing to the girl in the big chair, who watched withgrave eyes. And Kenset kept up a running stream of gay talk all thetime. He wanted to make her at ease, to cover the thought of thestrain between them, and how much he wanted to drive from his own mindthe knowledge that this sweet and wholesome creature was a potentialmurderer, he did not know. From a can he measured chocolate. From apan somewhere outdoors he brought milk. Sugar he added carefully as awoman, and presently he spread between them on the table a smallrepast that was strange to this girl of the wilderness. 

He watched her with appraising eyes and saw that there was in her noconsciousness of the unusual. She might have sat at meat in the bigroom of the Holding for all the flutter there was in her. 

He told her somewhat of himself, of his life in the East, but he wascareful not to ask about Lost Valley, to make mention of thecircumstances that had brought her to his door. And so an hour passedas if it had been a bagatelle. The afternoon was waning when Tharonrose swiftly and abruptly terminated this first visit inside his homeof any Lost Valley denizen. 

"Bring out your picture, " she said decisively, "I'll help you hang it, an' then I must go home. "

So Kenset dived once more into the mysterious recesses of the trunkand this time brought out a thing of rare beauty and value, a largetapestry, some four by six feet in size, a wonderful thing of soft anddeathless hues, of cunning distances, of Greek figures and leaningtrees, of sea-line so faint as to be almost lost in the misty skies. 

"Oh!" said Tharon Last with an intake of her breath, "Oh, where dothey make such things?"

"Far on the other side of the world, " said Kenset gently, pleasedwith the wonder in her wide eyes, the evident and quick realization ofbeauty. 

She whirled from it and glanced quickly at the two spaces on therugged walls. 

"There, " she said, pointing to the broad expanse between the northernwindows, "hang it there. "

"Done, " said Kenset, and went promptly for a hammer. 

When the huge thick mat was securely stretched in place, Tharonhelping to hold it while he pounded in the broad-topped tacks, Kensetstepped back and wondered how he had ever for a moment consideredhanging it in any other spot. The tempered light from the door came inupon it, bringing out each enchanted charm, each tender vista. 

"Wonderful!" he said to himself, "I never knew how lovely it was amidconventional surroundings!"

"Huh?" asked Tharon. 

The man laughed in spite of himself and turned his eyes to hers, tolose his quick amusement in the earnest blue depths that seemed toquestion him at every angle. 

"I mean that it looks better here in my cabin than it ever did on citywalls. "

"Why?"

"Well--I don't know. Contrast, perhaps. "

Tharon stood a moment thinking. 

"Perhaps, " she answered slowly, "yes, perhaps. I guess that's why youseem so diff'rent to me. Jim Last used to say that was why th' Valleywas so soft-like an' lovely, contrasted by th' Rockface. "

"Do I seem different to you?" asked Kenset quickly. "How?"

"Yes. I don't know how. You seem soft, like a woman--some women--an'I'm afraid----"

She stopped suddenly, abruptly halted in her naïve speech, as if shehad come face to face with something she had not meant to meet. 

"Afraid?" probed the man gravely, "go on. You are afraid--of what?"

"No, " said Tharon, "I won't say it"

"Please do. I want to know. "

"Then, " answered the girl straightly, after the honest and downrightfashion of all her dealings, "I'm afraid you are--are too soft. Youdon't pack a gun. I'm afraid you wouldn't use it if you did. "

There was a certain finality about the short speech, as if she had putthe last word of condemnation to his estate. 

Kenset looked down at his hands, spread them out a bit. 

"You're right, " he said shortly, though his voice was still gentle. "Idon't. And I wouldn't. Not until the last extremity. "

"An' what would that be?" she asked. 

"I don't just know, Miss Last, " he answered smiling and raising hiseyes once more to hers, "it would have to be--the _last_ extremity, Iknow. 

"The hands of all my forbears have been clean, so far as I know. Ihave a deep horror of that imaginary stain which human blood seems toleave on the hands of the killer. Blood guilt. "

"You call it that? My daddy had his killin's, but they were all infair-an'-open. _I_ called him a _man_. "

There was a ringing quality in her voice, a depth and resonance thatspoke of war and heroes. The fire that all the Holding knew wassuddenly in her eyes, flashing and flaming. Kenset caught it, and athrill shot through him. 

"Granted, " he said quickly. "But is there only _one_ type of man?"

"For me, " said Tharon, "yes. "

"I'm sorry, " said he, and for the life of him he did not know why. 

"So'm I, " said Tharon honestly. 

They looked at each other for a pregnant moment, while a silence fellon the cabin and they could hear the singing water running down theslopes. 

Then the girl stooped and rearranged the cushion in the big chair, laid a book more neatly on top of another at the table's edge. 

"Th' time is up, " she said, "I must be goin'. "

She straightened her shoulders and looked at him again. 

"I thank you for th' meal, " she said, "an' some day I'll return it--insome manner. I don't know yet just what you're here for, nor if you'reCourtrey's man or not--------"

"Good Lord!" ejaculated Kenset, but she went on. 

"I won't shake hands with you, for whilst I ain't done no killin' yet, I'm sworn--an' Jim Last's hands was red--they would be to such asyou--an' down to th' last drop o' blood, th' last beat o' my heart, I'm Jim Last's girl--th' best gun man in Lost Valley, if I do sayso. "

And she swung quickly to the door. 

Kenset followed her. He longed for words, but found none. 

There was a sudden tragic seeming in the very air, a change from thepleasant commonplace to the tense and unexpected. It was always so inthese strange meetings with the people of Lost Valley, it seemed, asif he was never to find his way among them, the sane and quiet coursethat he must travel. 

As they reached the step at the door sill El Rey stamped and whinnieda shrill blast. In through the gateway between the pines there came arider on a running horse, Billy on Golden who ploughed to a stopbefore them, his grey eyes troubled. 

"Hello, Billy, " said Tharon. "How's this?"

"Been lookin' for you, " said the boy. "We saw Courtrey an' hisruffians ridin' up east--watched 'em with th' glass, an' Anita saidyou rode south. Thought you might have met 'em. "

"I didn't meet 'em, so to speak, " she said, smiling, "though if I'dbeen on anythin' but El Rey I would. They tried to drive me into BlackCoulee. "

"Hell!" said Billy softly. 

Then the Mistress of Last's remembered her manners. 

"Billy, " she said, "I make you acquainted with Kenset of th'foothills. I rode in here just in time to shake th' Strongholdbunch. "

The two men spoke, reached to shake each other's hands, and took along survey that was mutual. As the two pairs of eyes met, a wallseemed to rear itself between them, a mist, a curtain, somethingintangible, but there. 

They looked across the woman's shoulder, and from that moment she wasto stand between, though what there could be in common between the manin the U. S. Service and the common rider from Last's was notapparent. El Rey was eager for flight and by the time Tharon's footwas in the stirrup he was up on his hind feet, fore feet beating theair, silver mane like a flying cloud. The girl rose with himgracefully, threw her leg across the saddle, waved a hand to Kenset inthe door, and in another moment they were gone away down the grassyslope, out through the opening, had stretched away along theoak-dotted plain, swung toward the north, and were out of sight. 

The forest man turned away from the doorway, stood a moment lookingover the cabin where the late light was making golden patterns on thegreen and brown rug, sighed and reached for his pipe. 

Somehow all the spirit seem to have gone from the summer day. The longtwilight was setting in. 

"She wouldn't shake hands, " he muttered to himself, "and what she saidwas true as death. She's _sworn_--and it is a solemn oath to her. Godhelp the man who killed her daddy!"

Then once more he sighed, unconsciously. 

"And Lord God help her!" he finished very gravely, "she is sosweet--so wild and spirited and sweet. "

Tharon and Billy let the horses run. Golden was a racer himself, though he could not hold a candle to the silver king, and the twoyoung creatures atop were free as the summer winds, as buoyant andfilled with joy of being. So they shot down along the levels, Tharonholding El Rey up a bit, though it was a man-size job to do so, andBilly's rein swinging loose on Golden's neck. They passed the last ofthe scattered oaks, came out to the green stretches. The sun wasswinging like a copper ball above the Wall at the west. Down throughthe cañons the light came in long red shafts that cut through thecobalt shadows like sharp lances of fire and reached half across LostValley. All the western part of the Valley lay in that blue-blackshadow. They could see Corvan set like a dull gem in the wide greencountry, the scattered ranches, miles apart. 

They swung down to the west a bit, for Tharon said she wanted to go bythe Gold Pool and see how it was holding out. 

"Fine, " said Billy, "she's deep as she ever was at this time of year, an' cold as snow. "

Where one tall cottonwood stood like a sentinel in the widespreadlandscape they drew rein and dismounted. Here a huge boulder croppedfrom the plain and under its protecting bulk there lay as lovely aspring as one would care to see, deep and golden as its name implied, above its swirling sands, for the waters were in constant turmoil asthey pressed up from below. 

The girl lay flat at its edge and with her face to the crystalsurface, drank long and deeply. 

As she looked up with a smile, Billy Brent felt the heart in himcontract with a sudden ache. 

Her fresh face, its cheeks whipped pink under their tan by the winds, its blue eyes sparkling, its wet red lips parted over the white teeth, hurt him with a downright pain. 

"Oh, Tharon, " he said with an accent that was all-revealing, "Oh, Tharon, dear!"

The girl scrambled to her feet and looked at him in surprise. 

"Billy, " she said sharply, "what's th' matter with you? Are yousick?"

"Yes, " said the boy with conviction, "I am. Let's go home. "

"Sick, how?" she pressed, with the born tyranny of the loving woman, "have you got that pain in your stomach again?"

Billy laughed in spite of himself, and the romantic ache wasshattered. 

"For the love of Pete!" he complained, "don't you ever forget that?You know I've never et an ounce of Anita's puddin's since. No, Ithink, " he finished judiciously as he mounted Golden, "that I'vecaught somethin', Tharon--caught somethin' from that feller of th'red-beet badge. Leastways I've felt it ever sence I left th'clearin'. "

And as they swung away from the spring toward the Holding, far aheadunder its cottonwoods, he let out the young horse for anotherstretch. 

"Bet Golden can beat El Rey up home, " he said over his shoulder. 

"Beat th' king?" cried Tharon aghast, "you're foolin', Billy, an' Idon't want to run nohow. I've run enough this day. "

So the rider held up again and together they paced slowly up throughthe gathering twilight where long blue shadows were reaching out totouch them from the western Wall and the golden shafts were turning tocrimson, were lifting as the sun sank, were travelling up and up alongthe eastern mountains toward the pale skies. Soon they rode in purpledusk while the whole upper world was bathed in crimson and lavenderlight and Lost Valley lay deep in the earth's heart, a sinister spot, secret and dark. 

"Sometimes, Billy, " said Tharon softly, "I like to ride like this, inth' big shadows--an' then I like to have some one with me that I know, some one like you, some one who will understand when I don't talk, an'who is always there beside me. It's a wonderful feelin'--but somehow, it's soft, too--mebby too soft--like--like--like a woman who's just awoman. "

The boy swallowed once, miserably. 

"Always, Tharon, " he said huskily, "always--when you want me--or needme--I'll be there, beside you. An' you don't need to even speak a wordto me. I'm like th' dogs--there whether you call or not. "

"I know, " said the girl, and reaching over she caught the rider'shand, brown beneath its vanity of studded leather cuff, and gave it alittle tender pressure. 

Billy set his teeth to keep from crushing her fingers, and togetherthey rode slowly up along the sounding slopes to the beautifulsecurity and comfort of Last's Holding. 

CHAPTER VII

THE SHOT IN THE CAÑONS

Kenset of the foothills was very busy. Between study of his maps andthe endless riding of their claimed areas he was out from dawn tilldark. 

He found, indeed, that none but he, of late years, had ridden thosesloping forest covered skirts. Some one, sometime, must have done so, else the maps themselves would not have been, but what marks they musthave left were either gone through the erosion of the elements or beenwantonly destroyed. 

He fancied the former had been the case, for he saw no signs ofdestruction, and the very curiosity of the denizens of the Valleyprecluded familiarity with forest work. 

So he laid out for himself the labour of a dozen men and went at itwith a vim that kept him at high tension. Therefore he had little timeto think of Tharon Last and the strange life in Lost Valley. Onlywhen he rode between given points, unintent on the land around, did hegive up to his speculations. At such times his mind invariably wentback to that first day at Baston's steps and he saw her again as hehad seen her then, tense, stooping, her elbows bent above the guns ather hips, coming backward along the porch, feeling for the steps withher foot. 

Always he saw the ashen whiteness of her cheeks beneath her blowinghair. 

Always he frowned at the memory and always he felt a thrill go downhis nerves. What was she, anyway, this wild, sweet creature of thewilderness who held herself aloof from his friendship, and said thatshe was "sworn?"

Kenset, sane, quiet, peace loving, shook himself mentally and triednot to think of her. But day after day he came down along the edges ofthe scattered woods where the cattle grazed--on the forest lands--andlooked over to where the Holding lay like a greener spot on the greenstretches. 

He thought of her, living in this feudal hold, mistress of her riders, her cattle, and her wonderful racing horses of the Finger Marks, sweet, fair, wholesome--with the six-guns at her slender hips!

If only he, Kenset, could take those weapons from her clinging hands, could wipe out of her young heart the calm intent to kill!

It was preposterous! It was awful!

Bred to another life, another law, another type of woman, he could notreconcile this girl of Lost Valley with anything he knew. 

He went over in his mind again and again the serene calmness of her inhis cabin that day of the race with Courtrey, and shook his head inpuzzlement. 

But why should he trouble himself about her at all?

He had come here in his Government's service to reclaim its forest, tolook after its interest. 

Why should he bother with the moral code of Lost Valley?

But reason as he might, the face of Tharon Last came back to haunthim, waking or asleep. 

He knew that it troubled him and was, in a way, ashamed. So he workedhard at his tasks, relocated boundaries, marked them with a peculiarblaze in convenient trees which looked something like this:

and set up monuments with odd and undecipherable hieroglyphics uponthem. 

And with each blaze, each mark and monument and sign, he drew closerin about him the net of suspicion and disapproval which was weaving inLost Valley, for there was not one but ran the gamut of closeinspection and speculation by Courtrey's men, by the settlers who camemany miles over from the western side of the Valley for the purpose, and by Tharon's riders. 

Low mutters of disapproval growled in the Valley. 

Who was this upstart, anyway, to come setting signs and marks in theland that had been theirs from time immemorial? What mattered thelittle copper-coloured badge on his breast? What mattered it that hewas beginning to send out word of his desire to work with and for thecattlemen of Lost Valley, the settlers, the homesteaders?

What was this matter of "grazing permits" of which he had spoken atthe Stronghold?

Permits?

They had grazed their cattle where and when they chose--andcould--from their earliest memory. 

They asked no leave from Government. 

When Kenset rode into Corvan he was treated with exaggerated politenessby those with whom he had to deal, with utter unconsciousness by allthe rest. To cattleman and settler alike he was as if he had not been. 

None spoke to him in the few broad streets, none asked him to a bar todrink. 

Serene, quiet, soft spoken, he came and went about his business, andsneers followed him covertly. 

It was not long after Tharon's visit to the cabin in the glade, thatKenset, riding alone along the twilight land, passed close to themouth of Black Coulee one day at dusk. He rode loosely, slouchingsidewise in his saddle, for he had been to Corvan for his monthly mailand a few supplies tied in a bag behind his saddle, and he carried hisbroad hat in his hand. 

The little cool wind that blew in from the narrow gorge of the BottleNeck and spread out like an invisible fan, breathed on his face with agrateful touch. The day had been hot, for the summer was openingbeautifully, and he had ridden Captain far. Therefore he jogged andrested, his arms hanging listlessly at his sides, his thoughts twothousand miles away. 

At the mouth of Black Coulee where the sinister split of the deep washcame up to the level, there grew a fringe of wild poplar trees. Theywere beautiful things, tall and straight and thickly covered with amillion shiny leaves that whirled and rustled softly in the wind, showing all their soft white silver sides when the breeze came up fromthe south as it did this day. There was water in Black Coulee, manysmall springs, not deep enough nor steady enough to count for water ina range country, but sufficient to keep the poplars growing on the rimof the great wash, to stand them thick on the caving sides. Wholebenches of earth with their trees upon them slipped down these sidesfrom time to time, making of the Coulee a mysterious labyrinth ofthickets and shelves, of winding ways and secret places. 

Kenset had heard a few wild stories about Black Coulee. Sam Drake hadtalked a bit more than most men of Lost Valley would have talked, andhe had listened idly. 

Now as he rode up along the levels and neared the dark mouth of thecut he studied it with appraising eyes. It was sinister enough, in alltruth, a deep, dark place behind its veil of poplars, secretive, hushed. 

The red light that dyed Lost Valley so wondrously at the hour of thesun's sharp decline above the peaks and ridges of the Cañon Countrywas awash in all the great sunken cup, save at the west under theRockface where the shadows were already dark. 

Kenset drank in the beauty of the scene with smiling eyes. Already alove for this hidden paradise had grown wonderfully in his heart. Hefelt as if he had never lived before, as if he had never knownbeauty. 

And so, dreaming a little of other scenes, smiling to himself, hejogged along on Captain and was nearly past the frowning mouth of theCoulee, when there came the sharp snap of a rifle in the stillness, and Captain changed his feet, sagged and quivered, then caught himselfand leaped ahead. For one amazed moment Kenset thought the horse washit. Then, as he straightened in his saddle and dropped his hand tocatch up his hanging rein, he looked quickly down. Where he wasaccustomed to the smooth feel of the pommel beneath his palm there wasa sharp raw edge. A splinter of wood stood up and a small flare ofleather hung to one side. 

A bullet, singing out of Black Coulee, had carried away part of thepommel. 

Kenset shut his lips in a new line, gathered up his rein and drew thehorse down to a walk with an iron hand. 

Slowly, without a backward glance, he rode on across the darkeninglevels. He was no fool. 

He knew he had had his warning. 

Very well. He would give back his acceptance of that warning. 

He had said to Courtrey that night at the Stronghold that he had cometo stay. 

No bunch of lawless bullies were going to scare him out. 

No other shot followed. He had not expected one. 

For a time after that he went about his work as usual. Nothinghappened; he had no outward sign of the distaste with which he wasregarded by all factions alike, it seemed. 

He met Courtrey face to face in Corvan one day and spoke to himcivilly, but Courtrey did not speak. Wylackie Bob did, however--asneering salutation that was a covert insult. Kenset touched his hatwith dignity and passed on. 

"Of all th' tenderfeet!" said Baston, watching the small by-play. "Ib'lieve you could spit on him, boys. "

"I don't, " spoke up Old Pete, shuffling by on his bandy legs, "sometimes that quiet, soft-spoken kind rises--an' then hell's to payin their veecinity. "

But Wylackie looked at the weazened snow-packer with his snake-likeeyes and snapped out a warning. 

"Some folks takes sides too quick, sometimes. "

But Old Pete went on about his business. He knew, as did all theValley, that a price was on his head with Courtrey's band for thedaring leap which had saved the life of Tharon Last that day inspring. 

Sooner or later that price would be paid, but Old Pete was truewestern stuff. He had lived his life, had had his day, and he was fullof pride at the turn of fate which had made him a hero in a way at theend. 

All the Valley stood off and admired Jim Last's daughter. 

Pete basked in the reflected light. And Tharon herself had taken hisgnarled old hand one day in Baston's store and called him athoroughbred. 

Folks in Lost Valley were chary of words, conservative to the lastdegree. That simple word, the handclasp, the look in the clear blueeyes, had been his eulogy. 

It was whispered about, as was every smallest happening, and came tothe ears of Courtrey himself, who had promised those vague things forthe future on the fateful night. But Courtrey was playing a waitinggame. He was obsessed with the image of Tharon. Sooner or later hemeant to have her, to install her at the Valley's head. He had alwayshad what he wanted. Therefore, he expected to have this girl with thechallenging eyes, the maddening mouth, like crimson sumac. 

Ellen?

Already he was setting in motion a thing that was to take care ofEllen. 

The thing in hand now was to placate Tharon, the mistress of Last's, to play the overwhelming lover. 

Courtrey knew better than to go near the Holding. Bully that he was heyet had sense enough to know that no fear of him dwelt in the huge oldhouse under the cottonwoods. If Tharon herself did not shoot him, one--or all--of her riders would. The day of the armed band ridingdown to take her was, if not past, passing fast. He recalled the lookof the settlers--poor spawn that he hated--whirling their solid columnbehind her to face him that day from the Cup Rim's floor. 

No. Courtrey meant to have the girl some day--to hold in his arms thatached for her loveliness, the strong, resistant young body of her--tosate his thief's mouth with kisses. But he would call her to him ofher own will, would taste the savage triumph of seeing her come suingfor his mercy. 

If Tharon meant to break Courtrey, he meant no less to break her. 

Outlawry--mob law--they were pitted against each other. 

And, lifting its head dimly through the smother of hatred, of wrong, of repression and reprisal, another law was struggling toward thelight in Lost Valley--the sane, quiet law of right and equality, typified by the smiling, dark-eyed man of the cabin in the forestglade. 

Courtrey sent word to Tharon--an illy spelled letter, mailed atBaston's--that he had meant nothing by that race above the BlackCoulee, except another kiss. There was Courtrey's daring in theaffronting words. 

She sent the letter back to him--riding in on El Key alone--with theoutline of a gun traced across it. 

"Th' little wildcat!" grinned the man, "she's sure spunky!"

 * * * * *

Once again Tharon met Kenset in the days that followed. Riding by theSilver Hollow she stopped one breathless afternoon, drank of thesnow-cold waters, shared them with El Rey, dropped the rein over thestallion's head and flung herself full length on the earth beside thespring. A clump of willow trees grew here, for every spring in LostValley had its lone sentinels to call its presence across thestretching miles. As the girl lay flat on her back with her handsbeneath her head, she looked up into the blue heart of the archingskies where the fleecy white clouds sailed, and a sense of sweetnessand peace came down upon her like a garment. 

"You're sure some lovely spot, Lost Valley, " she said aloud, "an' nomistake. I know, more'n ever as th' days go by that Jim Last was onlyjokin' when he told me of those other places out below, big as you, lovely as you. It just ain't possible. Is it, El Rey, old boy?"

And she moved a booted foot to the king's striped hoof and tapped itsmartly. 

El Rey, always aloof, always touchy, never sure of temper, jumped andsnorted. The girl laughed and crossed her feet and fell to speculatingidly about the world that lay beyond Lost Valley. Little she knew ofit. Only the brief words of her father from time to time, thereluctant speech of Last's riders, for the master of the Holding hadlaid down the law concerning this. 

His daughter was of the Valley, content. He meant her to be so always. The man who had instilled into her young mind a discontent with herenvironment, a longing for the "flesh-pots" of the world as he hadstyled it once, would have had short shrift at Last's. He would havereceived his time and "gone packing" swiftly. 

And Tharon was content. 

Barring the loneliness that had come with Jim Last's death, she waswell content. 

So she lay by the willows and hummed a sliding tune, a soft, sweetthing of minors and high notes falling, like rippling waters, andlazily watched the high white clouds sail by. 

And as she lay she became conscious of something else in the drowsingland beside herself and her horse. She felt it first, this presence--athin, dim vibration that sang in the earth beneath her. It stopped thewordless song on her lips, stilled the breath in her throat, set everynerve in her to listening, as it were. 

Presently she sat up and felt quickly for the gun-butts in theirscabbards. Then she parted the willows and looked out over the rollingslopes and levels. True enough. A horseman was coming in from thewest, making for the Silver Hollow, but Tharon smiled and her fingersrelaxed on the gun. This man rode straight--like a lance, shethought--and his mount was brown, a good-enough common horse, but nosteed of Lost Valley. 

Captain lacked the fire, the ramping keenness of the Ironwoods, thespirit and dash of the Finger Marks. For a long time the girl in thewillows watched them. Then as they came near she rose and caught ElRey's bridle. 

He was no gentleman, this big blue-silver king. He was savage and wildand imperious. He hated other horses with a quick hatred sometimes andhad been known to wreak this sudden rage upon them in sickening fury. 

So Tharon held him with a strong brown hand wrapped in the chain belowthe Spanish spade bit in his mouth. She stood beside him, waiting, aslim, golden creature, tawny of hair and blue of eye, and the greathorse towered above her mightily, his silver mane blowing up above hisarching neck in the little wind that came from the south. 

They made a picture that Kenset never forgot, as he swung round thewillows and faced them. 

El Rey screamed and pounded with his striped hoofs, but Tharon jerkedhim down with no gentle hand. 

"Be still, you bully!" she said sharply. 

"Why, Miss Last!" cried the forest man, "I'm so glad to meet you!"

There was the genuine delight of a boy in his voice, and Tharon caughtthe note. The sweet, disarming smile parted her lips and she was allgirl at the moment, artless, innocent, unstained by the shadow oflawlessness and crime that seemed to ever hang above her in Kenset'sthoughts. 

"Are you?"

"I certainly am. "

He swung down, gave Captain a drink at the edge of the spring farthestfrom El Rey, dropped the rein when he had finished, and swung aroundto face the girl. He took off his wide hat and wiped his forehead witha square of linen finer than anything of its kind she had ever seen. 

Then he stood for a moment looking straight into her eyes with hissmiling dark ones. It seemed to Tharon that this man was alwayssmiling. 

"This is your spring, isn't it?" he asked. 

"Yes. The Silver Hollow. Th' Gold Pool is farther south toward th'Black Coulee. There was another one, fine as this, perhaps a betterone, up on th' Cup Rim Range, but Courtrey blew her up, damn him! Shewas called th' Crystal. " Kenset caught his breath, mentally, all butphysically, and put up a hand to cover his lips. 

This _was_ another type of woman from any he had ever met, in truth. 

The oath, rolling roundly over her full red lips, was as unconsciousas the long breath that lifted her breast at the memory of thatoutrage. 

"We replaced her with a well--an' it's a corker. Mebby better thanth' old Crystal, though she was a lovely thing. As clear as--as icethat's frozen hard without a ripple of white. You know that kind?"

"Yes, " said Kenset gravely. 

"Well, " sighed Tharon, "she's gone, an' there ain't no use cryin' overspilt milk. What you ben a-doin' sence I helped you hang th'picture?"

"Won't you sit down?" Kenset stepped aside. "It is uncomfortable tostand through a visit--and I mean to have a long talk-fest with you, if you will be so kind. "

Tharon flung herself down at the spring's edge, eased the right gunfrom under her hip, leaned on her elbow and prepared to listen. 

"Fire away, " she said. 

Kenset laughed. 

"For goodness' sake!" he ejaculated, "I said visit. That takes two. What have you been doing?"

"Well, everythin', mostly. Made a new shirt for Billy, for one thing. An' I showed Courtrey th' picture o' this. "

She patted the blue gun that lay half in her lap, its worn scabbardblack against her brown skirt. 

Kenset sobered at once. As ever when he let his mind dwell on thatdark shadow which sat so lightly on this girl, he had no feeling formirth. 

A very real chill went down his spine and he looked intently into hereyes. 

"How?" he asked, "what did you do?"

But Tharon shook her head. 

"Nothin' you'd understand, " she said quietly. 

"I can show you something you will understand, " he said, and reachedfor Captain's bridle. He pulled the horse around and pointed to thesaddle horn. 

"See that?"

She looked up quickly. With the sure instinct of a dweller in a gunman's land she knew the meaning of the splintered wood of the pommel, the torn and ragged leather that had covered it. 

"Hell!" she said softly, "where did you get that?"

"At the mouth of Black Coulee, at dusk a week ago. "

For a long moment Tharon studied the saddle. Then her gaze dimmed, lengthened, went beyond into infinitude. The pupils of her eyes drewdown to tiny points of black against the brilliant blue. 

At last she turned and held out a hand, rising from her elbow. 

"I beg your pardon, Mister, " she said quaintly, "fer that day at theHoldin' an' th' meal I offered an' took, an' fer my words. I know nowthat you are--that you were--straight. I don't yet know what you maymean in Lost Valley with your talk of Government, but I do know youain't a Courtrey man. "

Kenset took the hand. It was firm and shapely and vibrant with theyoung life there was in her. He laid his other one over it and held itin a close clasp for a moment. 

"I mean only right, " he said, "sanity and law and decency. I think Ihave a big problem to handle here--aside from my work on the forest--aproblem I must solve before I can be effective in that work--and I ammore sincerely glad than I can say that my friend, the outlaw, tookthat warning shot at me. It ruined a perfectly good saddle, but it hasmade one point clear to you. I am no Courtrey man, and that's a solemnfact. "

"An' I ain't ashamed to say I'm glad, too, " said Tharon. 

So, with the sun shining in the cloud-flecked heavens and the littlewinds blowing up from the south to ruffle the hair at the girl'stemples, these two sat by the Silver Hollow and talked of a thousandthings, after the manner of the young, for Kenset found himselfreverting to the things of youth in the light of Tharon's gravesimplicity. 

They looked into each other's eyes and found there strange depths andlights. They were aliens, strangers, groping dimly for a commonground, and finding little, though presently they fell once more uponthe law in Lost Valley and earnestness deepened into gravity. 

"Miss Last, " said Kenset, thrilling at his daring, "why must this lawdwell in these?" and he reached a hand to tap the gun on her lap. 

"Why? That very question'd show your ignorance to any Lost Valley man. Because it's all there is. You've seen Courtrey. You've seen SteptoeService. Can't you judge from them?"

"Surely, so far as they two go. A bad man and a bad sheriff. But theyare not all the officers of this County. Where and who is yourSuperior Judge?"

"Poor ol' Ben Garland. Weaker'n skim milk. Scared to say his soul'shis own. "

There was infinite scorn in her voice. 

"No, it's Steptoe Service, or nothin'. "

Kenset thought a moment. 

"Who's the Coroner?" he asked presently. 

"Jim Banner, " she answered quickly, "as straight a man as ever lived. Brave, too. He's been shot at more'n once fer takin' exception to someraw piece o' work in this Valley, fer pokin' his nose in, so to speak. Jim Last used to say he was th' only _man_ at the Seat, which isCorvan, you know, of course. "

"District Attorney?"

"Tom Nord. Keen as a razor an' married to Courtrey's sister. Now doyou see why this is th' law?" She, too, tapped the gun. 

Kenset frowned and looked down along the green range. He thought ofthe unpainted pine building in Corvan which was the Court House. Astrange personnel, truly, to invest it with authortity!

"I see, " he said briefly, "but there must be some way out. This is notthe right way, the way that must come and last. "

Tharon's lips drew into the thin line that made them like herfather's. "It's th' law that's here, " she said and there was aninstant coldness in her voice, "an' it's th' law that'll last untilCourtrey or I go down. "

The man, watching, saw that thinning of the lips, the hardening of allthe young lines of her face. He knew he had blundered. Talk was cheap. It was action that counted in Lost Valley. 

With a quick motion he reached over and caught the girl's hand anddrew it to him, covering it with both of his. 

Her eyes followed, came to rest on his face, cool, appraising, waiting. 

She was, in all that had counted in his life, crude, untutored, basic. 

Yet that calm look made his impulsive action seem unpardonable in thenext second. However a warm surge of feeling shot through him with thequiet resting of that firm brown hand between his own, and he held ittighter. Kenset had thought he was sophisticated, that little ornothing could stir him deeply--not since Ethel Van Riper had gone toEurope as the bride of the old Count of Easthaven. That had been fouryears back. He had been pretty young then, but the young feel deeply. 

Now he held a gun woman's hand in the thin shade of a willow clump inthe heart of Lost Valley--and the blood surged in his ears, the levelsand slopes danced before his vision. 

"Miss Tharon, " he said, for the first time using her given name, "Ibeg your pardon. You are strong, simple, serene. You know your landand its ways. I am an alien, an interloper--but I can't bear to thinkof you as waiting for the time to kill a man--or to be killed in thekilling. It sickens me. "

Tharon snatched her hand from his and leaped to her feet. 

"Don't talk like that!" she cried passionately, "I don't like to hearit! I thought you were a real man, maybe, but you're not! You--you'rea woman! A soft woman--I hate th' breed!"

Her face was flushed, for what reason Kenset, stunned by her vehementwords, could not tell. She flung the rein up and followed it, leapingto saddle like a man. 

"I tol' you we couldn't be friends!" she cried, her eyes blazing withsudden fire, "there ain't no manner of use a-tryin'. "

Kenset, springing forward, caught El Rey's bit. The stallion rearedand struck, but he held him down. 

"There is use, Tharon, " he panted. "It's vital! Since that day onBaston's steps, when you backed out past me I have had you in mymind--my thoughts by day and night--there is use, and I'll keep yourhands from blood--Courtrey's or any other--if it takes my life--sohelp me God!"

The girl leaned down and her blue eyes blazed in his face. 

"An' make me false to th' crosses on Jim Last's stone?" she cried. "No--not you or anybody else--could do that trick! Let go!"

The next moment she had whirled out from the flickering shade of thewillows and was gone around toward the north--there was only the soundof hoofs ringing on the earth. Kenset, left alone where the SilverHollow bubbled softly above its snowy sands, passed a trembling handacross his eyes and stood as in a trance. 

What did it mean? What had he promised? What vital emotion had grippedhim that his usually quiet tongue had rushed into that torrentialspeech that dealt with life and death? What was Tharon Last to him?

A figure of the old West! A romantic gun woman with her weapons on herhips! A rider of wild horses!

Slowly, as if he had gained an added weight of years, he reinedCaptain and swung himself up. He rode east from the spring toward thelacy and far-reaching skirts of the forest, and for the first time hesaw the rolling country with tragic eyes. 

It held deep issues--life and death and the passing or continuing ofrégimes and and dynasties--but it was a wondrous country, and, comegood or bad, it had become his own. He swung around in his saddle andlooked far back across the Valley. He saw the golden light on itsuncounted acres, the shadow falling at the foot of the great Rockface, the mighty Wall itself with the silver ribbon of the Vestal's Veilfalling straight down from the upper rim, the distant town, lookingalways like a dull gem in a dark setting, and a thrill shot to hisheart. 

Yes, if he lived to do his work in the hidden Valley--if he was shotthis night on his own doorstep, it was his country. 

He who was alien in every way, was yet native. 

Something in the depths of him came down as from far distant racialhaunts and was at home. 

So he rode slowly up among the scattered oaks with his hands folded onthe mutilated pommel, and he knew that his lines were definitelycast. 

 * * * * *

Tharon Last rode into the Holding and dismounted in unwonted silence. 

There was a frown between her brows, an unusual thing. She turned thestallion into his corral, dragged off the big saddle to hang it on itspeg, flung the studded bridle on a post. 

The men were not in yet. Far toward the north beyond the big corralsshe could see the cattle grazing toward home. A surge of savage joy inher possessions flooded over her. These things were her own. They werewhat Jim Last had worked for all his life. 

Not one hoof or hide should Courtrey take without swift reprisal. 

Not one inch should he push her from her avowed purpose--not thoughall the strangers in the world came to Lost Valley and prated ofblood-guilt. 

But for some vague reason which she could not have analyzed had shewished, she went to the paled-in garden where the silver waterstrickled and searched among the few flowers growing there for someblossom, sweeter, tenderer, more mild and timid than usual for thepale hands of the Virgin in the deep south room. 

With the posy in her fingers she slipped quietly to her sanctuary andknelt before the statue, pensive, frowning, vaguely stirred. Shewhispered the prayers that Anita had taught her, but she found with astart that the words were meaningless, that she was saying themmechanically. 

Her mind had been at the Silver Hollow, seeing again the forest man'sdark eyes, so grave, so quiet, so deep--her right hand was consciousas it had never been in all her life before. She heard a strange man'scondemning voice, felt the warmth of his hands pressed upon hers. 

The mistress of Last's shook herself, both mentally and physically, and set herself to resay her prayers. 

When she came out to the life and bustle of the ranch house the cattlewere streaming into the far corrals under their dust, the riders wereshouting, young Paula sang in the kitchen, and Anita passed back andforth about the evening meal. 

 * * * * *

There was a slim moon in the west above the Cañon Country. The skieswere softly alight, high and vaulted, deep and mysterious and sweet. 

World-silence, profound as eternity, hung tangibly above Lost Valleyand the Wall, the eastern ramparts of the shelving mountains, therocklands at the north. There was little sound in all this sleepingwilderness. 

Bird life was rare. The waters that fell at seasons from the openmouths of the cañons half way up the Rockface were dried. Down in theValley itself there could be seen the lights of Corvan which neverwent out from dusk to dawn. Far to the north a black blot might havebeen visible with a fuller moon--Courtrey's herds bedded on the range, the only stock in the Valley so privileged. 

Along the foot of the Rockface in the early evening a tiny processionhad crawled, three burros, their pack-saddles empty save for a coupleof sacks tied across each, and a weazened form that followed them--OldPete, the snow-packer, bound on his nightly journey to the CañonCountry for the bags of snow for the cooling of the Golden Cloud'srefreshments. 

He was a little old man, grotesque and misshapen, yet he followedbriskly after the burros, which were the fastest travelers of theirkind in the land. He rolled on his bandy legs and kept the littleanimals on a constant trot with the wisp of stick he carried and thedeep, harsh cries that heralded his coming for a mile ahead and sentthe echoes reverberating between the cañon walls. A little north ofCorvan he had followed the Rockface close for a distance, thensuddenly turned back on his tracks and disappeared, burros and all. This was the invisible entrance to the Cañon Country, a narrow mouththat opened sidewise into the very breast of the thousand-foot Walland led back along a thin sheet of rock that stood between the gorgeand the Valley. The floor of this cut or cañon, which was so narrowthat the laden burros had a "narrow squeak" to pass, as Pete said, lifted sharply. It rose smoothly underfoot in the pitch darkness, forthe cut was roofed in the living rock five hundred feet above, andclimbed for a mile. It was a dead, flat place, without sound, for thefootsteps of the burros and the man fell dully on the soft and slidingfloor, and it seemed to have no acoustic properties. 

At the end of the mile this snake-like split in the solid rock camesuddenly out into a broader, more steeply pitched cañon whose wallswent straight up to the open skies above. Here there were heaps andpiles and long slides of dead stone, weathered and powdered, that hadfallen from time to time from the parent walls. This in turn led upand on to other breaks and splits and cuts, all open, all lifting tothe upper world, and all as blind and dangerous to follow as anydeathtrap that old Dame Nature ever devised. Here, at any crosscut, any debouching cañon, a man might turn to his undoing, might travel onand up and never reach those beckoning heights, seen clearly from someblind pocket he had wandered into, might never find his way back tothe original cañon among the continuous cuts that met and crossed andpassed each other among the towering points and sheets. 

But Old Pete knew where he was going. Not for nothing had he threadedthese passages for fifteen years. He knew the Cañon Country for thelower part better than any man in the Valley, if Courtrey beexcepted. 

So this night he climbed and shouted to his burros and thought no moreof the sounding splits, for here the echoes raved, than he would havethought of the open plains below. 

He passed on and up to where a certain cut lay full, year after year, of packed and hardened snow. For fifteen years Old Pete had visitedthis cut, a deeper drop into the nether world of rock, and cut hissupplies from its surface. Every season he took what he needed, leaving a widening circle at the edge from which he worked, where thecut he traveled passed the mouth of the pent cañon, and every year thesnows, sifting from high above, leveled it again. There was no knownoutlet for this glacier-like pack, no sliding chance, yet it wasalways on a certain level--each summer seeming to lose just what itgained in winter. It lay level at the mouth of the passing cut, wasnever filled higher. 

Starting at dusk from Corvan, Pete reached his destination around twoo'clock, filled his sacks, tied them on his mules and started down, coming out of the Rockface in time to meet the dawn that quivered onthe eastern ramparts. 

But this night Old Pete, sturdy, fearless, unarmed, was not to see theaccustomed pageant of the rising sun, the fleeing veils of shadowsshifting on the Valley floor that he had watched with silent joy forall these years. 

This night he was well down along his backward way, shouting in thedarkness, for the slim moon had dropped down behind the lofty peaksabove, when all the echoes in the world, it seemed, let loose in thecañons and all the weight of the universe itself came pressing hardupon his dauntless heart with the crack of a gun. 

"Th' price!" whispered Old Pete as he fell sprawling on his face, "ferpure flesh!" With which cryptic word he bade farewell to the soundingpasses, the tenets of manhood as he conceived them, the valour, andthe grumbling at life in general. 

The little burros, placid and faithful, went on and saw the pageant ofthe dawn from the hidden gateway in the Wall, crept down the Rockface, single file, and at their accustomed hour stood at their accustomedplace before the Golden Cloud. 

It was Wan Lee, Old Pete's _bête noir_, who found them there and ranshouting through the crowd of belated players in the saloon's bigroom, his pig-tail flying, his almond eyes popping, to upset a tableand batter on his master's door and scream that the "bullos" werehere, "allesame lone, " and that there was blood all spattered on thehind one's rump!

CHAPTER VIII

WHITE ELLEN

So old Pete, the snow-packer, had paid the price of gallantry. Thebullet he had averted from Tharon Last's young head that day in theGolden Cloud but sheathed itself to wait for him. All the Valley knewit. Not a soul beneath the Rockface but knew beyond a shadow of adoubt who, or whose agents, had followed Pete that night to the CañonCountry. Whispers went flying about as usual, and as usual nothinghappened. 

When the news of this came to Last's Holding the mistress sat down atthe big desk in the living room, laid her tawny head on her arms andwept. 

There was in her a new softness, a new feeling of misery--as if onehad wantonly killed a rollicking puppy before her eyes. Those tearswere Old Pete's requiem. She dried them quickly, however, and setanother notch to her score with Courtrey. 

It was then that the waiting game ceased abruptly. 

Tharon, riding on El Rey, went in to Corvan. She tied the horse atthe Court House steps and went boldly in to the sheriff's office. 

Behind her were Billy, like her shadow, and the sane and quietConford. 

Steptoe Service, fat and important, was busy at his desk. His spurslay on a table, his wide hat beside them. The star of his office shoneon his suspender strap. 

"Step Service, " said the girl straightly, "when are you goin' to lookinto this here murder?"

Service swung round and shot an ugly look at her from his small eyes. 

"Have already done so, " he said, "ben out an' saw to th' buryin'!"

Tharon gasped. 

"Buried him already? How dared you do it?"

"Say, " said Service, banging a fist on his table, "I'm th' sheriff ofMenlo County, young woman. I ordered him buried. "

"Where?"

"What's it to you?"

"Was Jim Banner there?"

"Jim Banner's sick in bed--got th' cholery morbus. "

Tharon's eyes began to blaze. 

"Bah!" she snapped, "th' time's ripe! Come on, boys, " and she whirledfrom the Court House. 

As she ran across the street to where the Finger Marks were tied, shecame face to face with Kenset on Captain. 

Her face was red from brow to throat, her voice thick with rage. 

"You talked o' law, Mr. Kenset, " she cried at the brown horse'sshoulder, her eyes upraised to his, "an' see what law there is inLost Valley! Step Service has buried th' snow-packer--without aby-your-leave from nobody! Th' man--or woman--that kills Courtreynow 'counts for three men--Harkness, Last an' Pete. I'm on my wayto th' Stronghold. "

She whirled again to run for the stallion, but the forest man leaneddown and caught her shoulder in a grip of steel. 

"Not now, " he said in that compelling low voice, "not now. I want totalk to you. "

"But I don't want to talk to you!" she flung out, "I'm goin'!"

Over her head Conford's anxious eyes met Kenset's. 

"Hold her, " they begged plainly, "we can't. "

And Kenset held her, by physical strength. 

The grey eyes of Billy were on him coldly. The boy was hot with angerat the man. He put a hand on Kenset's arm. 

"Let go, " he said, but Kenset shook him off. 

"Come out on the plain a little way with me, all of you, " he said, "this is no place to talk. "

Tharon, standing where he had stopped her, her breast heaving, herlips apart, seemed struggling against an unknown force. She put up ahand and tried to dislodge his fingers on her shoulder, but couldnot. 

Presently she wet her lips and looked around the street, alreadyfilled with watching folk, then up at Kenset. 

"What for?" she asked. 

"I think I can tell you something, " he answered quietly. 

"All right, " she said briefly, "let go an' I'll come. "

Without a word the man loosed her. She went to El Rey and mounted. 

Her riders mounted with her, Billy's face frowning and set. From thesteps of Baston's store a few cowboys watched. There were noStronghold men in town, for it was too early in the day. 

In silence Kenset led out of town at a brisk canter. His lips wereset, his eyes very grave. 

In the short gallop that followed while they cleared the skirts of thetown, he did some swift thinking, settled some heavy questions forhimself. 

He was about to take a decided step, to put himself on record insomething that did not concern his work in the Valley. 

He was going directly opposite to the teaching of his craft. He wasabout to take sides in this thing, when he had laid down for himselfrigid lines of non-partisanship. His mind was working swiftly. 

If he flung himself and his knowledge of the outside world and the lawinto this thing he sunk abruptly the thing for which he had come toLost Valley--the middle course, the influence for order that he hadhoped to establish that he might do his work for the Government. 

But he could not help it. At any or all costs he must stop thisblue-eyed girl from riding north to challenge Courtrey on hisdoorstep. 

The blood congealed about his heart at the thought. 

Where the rolling levels came up to the confines of the town they rodeout far enough to be safe from eavesdroppers, halted and faced eachother. 

"Miss Last, " said Kenset gently, "I'm a stranger to you. I have littleor no influence with you, but I beg you to listen to me. You say thereis no help for the conditions existing in Lost Valley. That outragefollows outrage. True. I grant the thing is appalling. But there isredress. There is a law above the sheriff, when it can be proven thatthat officer has refused to do his duty. That law is invested in thecoroner. Your coroner can arrest your sheriff. He can investigate amurder--he can issue a warrant and serve it anywhere in the State. Hecan subpoena witnesses. Did you know that?"

Tharon shook her head. 

"Nor you?" he asked Conford. 

"I knew somethin' like that--but what's th' use? Banner's a brave man, but he's got a family. An' he's been only one against th' whole push. What could he do when there wasn't another man in th' Valley dared tostand behind him? You saw what happened to Pete. He struck upCourtrey's arm when he shot at Tharon one night last spring. Th' samething'd happen to Banner if he tried to pull off anythin' like that. "

A light flamed up in Kenset's eyes. 

"If you, Miss Last, " he said straightly, "will give me your word to dono shooting, something like that will be pulled off here, andshortly. "

He looked directly at Tharon, and for the first time in her life shefelt the strength of a gaze she couldn't meet--not fully. 

But Tharon shook her head. 

"I'm sworn, " she said simply. 

Kenset's face lost a bit of colour. Billy, watching, turned greybeneath his tan. He saw something which none other did, a thing thatdarkened the heavens all suddenly. 

"Then, " said Kenset quietly, "we'll have to do without your promiseand go ahead anyway. We'll ride back to town, demand of Service aproper investigation by a coroner's jury, and begin at the bottom. "

Tharon moved uneasily in her saddle. 

"Why are you doin' this?" she asked. "Why are you mixin' up in ourtroubles? Why don't you go back to your cabin an' your pictures an'books an' things, an' let us work out our own affairs?"

Kenset lifted a quick hand, dropped it again. 

"God knows!" he said. "Let's go. "

And he wheeled his horse and started for Corvan, the others fallinginto line at his side. 

When Kenset, quietly impervious to the veiled hostility that met himeverywhere, faced Steptoe Service and made his request, that dignitaryfelt a chill go down his spine. Like Old Pete he felt the man beneaththe surface. He met him, however, with bluster and refused allreopening of a matter which he declared settled with the burial of thesnow-packer in the sliding cañons where he was found. 

"Very well, " said Kenset shortly, "you see I have witnesses to this, "and he turned on his heel and went out. 

"Now, Miss Last, " he said when they were in the wholesome summersunlight once more, "if you have any friends whom you think wouldstand for the right, send for them. "

"Th' Vigilantes, " said the girl, "we'll gather them in twenty-fourhours. "

"The Vigilantes?"

"Th' settlers, " said Conford. 

"All right. Until they are here we'll guard the mouth of this cañonthat leads into the Rockface, as I understand it. Now take me to thisman Banner. "

At a low, rambling house in the outskirts of Corvan they found JimBanner, sitting on the edge of his bed, undeniably sick from someacute attack. His eyes were steady, however, and he listened insilence while Kenset talked. 

"Mary, " he said, "bring me my boots an' guns. I been layin' for thisday ever sence I been in office. I wisht Jim Last was here to witnessit. "

In two hours Kenset was on his way to the blind mouth of the pass thatled into the Cañon Country, Tharon was shooting back to the Holding onEl Rey to put things on a watching basis there, while Conford andBilly went south and west to rouse the Vigilantes. 

With Kenset rode Banner, weak and not quite steady in his saddle, buta fighting man notwithstanding. 

All through the golden hours of that noonday while he jogged steadilyon Captain, Kenset was thinking. He had food for thought, indeed. Hecarried a gun at last--he who had ridden the Valley unarmed, had meantnever to carry one. He felt a stir within him of savagery, ofexcitement. 

He meant to have justice done, to put a hard hand on the law of LostValley. Murders uninvestigated, cattle stolen at will, settlers' homesburned over their heads, their hearths blown up by planted powder whenthey returned from any small trip, their horses run off--these thingshad seemed to him preposterous, mere shadows of facts. Now they weredown to straight points before him, tangible, solid. He got them fromthe blue eyes of Tharon Last, the gun woman, and he had taken sides!He who had meant to keep so far out of the boiling turmoil. 

He camped that night at the base of the Wall where the blind doorentered, made his bed just inside the dead black passage, and watchedwhile Banner, weary and still weak, slept in his blankets besidehim. 

This was new work for Kenset, strange work, this waiting for men whocalled themselves the Vigilantes--for a slim golden girl who rode andswore and pledged herself to blood!

More than once in the quiet night that followed, Kenset wiped a handacross his brow and found it moist with sweat. 

What did he mean? Again and again he asked himself that question. 

What did he mean by Tharon Last? What was this cold fire that burnedhim when he thought of her pulling those sinister blue guns onCourtrey? Did he fear to see her kill Courtrey--to see that shadowystain on her hands--or did he fear something worse, infinitelyworse--to see Courtrey, famous gun man, beat her to it!

He shuddered and sweat in the clear cold of the starlit night andsearched his bewildered heart. He could find no answer save and exceptthe weary one that Tharon Last must be holden from her sworn course. 

Tharon Last who looked at him with those deep blue eyes and spoke socoolly of this promised killing! He recalled the earnest frown betweenher brows, the simple directness of her duty as she saw it and told itto him. 

Either way--either way--she was lost to him forever--There he caughthimself and started all over again. 

What was she to him?

What could she ever be? She with her strange soul, _her lack ofsoul_!

What did he want her to be? One moment he ached with her loveliness--thenext he shuddered at her savagery. 

He did not want her to be anything! Why not go out to the dim andhalf-remembered world that he had left, the world of lights, paddedfloors and marble steps, leave this impossible land with its blood andwrongs? Nay, he could not leave Lost Valley. He was as much a part ofit as the grim Rockface itself, the Vestal's Veil eternally shimmeringin its thousand feet of beauty. Life or death, for Kenset, it must behere. 

So he waited and listened and watched the stars wheeling ineverlasting majesty, and he found his hands falling now and again uponthe gun-butts at his sides!

Near dawn Banner awoke, refreshed and stronger, and made him lie downfor a few hours' sleep. 

When he awoke the sun was well up along the heavens and Banner wasoffering him a piece of dry bread and some jerky, spiced and smokedand as dry and sweet as anything he had ever eaten in all his life. 

"They're comin', " said the man, "thar's five comin' from down alongth' Wall at th' south--that'll be Jameson, Hill and Thomas, an' someothers--an' I see about ten or twelve, near's I can make out, driftin'in from up toward th' Pomo settlement. Thar's a dust cloud movin' upfrom th' Bottle Neck, too. They'll be here by one o'clock at th'furdest. "

And they were, a grim, silent group of men, determined, watchful, benton the second step of the program to which they had pledged themselvesthat night at Last's Holding. Tharon was there, too, and with her BentSmith on Golden. 

It was a goodly number who left their horses in charge of Hill andDixon at the blind mouth and entered the long black cut. They climbedin low spoken quiet, their voices sounding back upon them with an odddead effect. They went faster than Old Pete was wont to travel, forthey meant to reach the spot of the tragedy before the early shadowsshould begin to sift down from the high world above. Tharon wenteagerly, her eyes dilated. 

Always she had dreamed of the Cañon Country. Always she had wonderedwhat it was like. When she left the mouth of the black roofed cut andcame out into the narrow, rockwalled cañon with its painted facesreaching up into the very skies, she gasped with amaze. Above her headshe could see the endless cuts and crosscuts, the standing spires andnarrow wedgelike walls that made a labyrinthian maze. 

Billy, close beside her, as always, watched her with a pensivesadness. 

And so the Vigilantes went in and up along the lower ways. There werethose among them who had been here before, who from time to time hadaccompanied the snow-packer on his nightly trips just for thecuriosity of the thing. These several men, among whom were Albrightfrom the Pomo settlement--a squawman--took the lead, and Albright, keen as a hound on trail, picked up Old Pete's marks and signs at arunning walk. 

And so it was, that, while the sun was still shining on the high peaksabove and the cañons were filled with a strange pink light reflectedfrom the red and yellow faces of the rock, the Vigilantes camesuddenly to a halt, for Albright had stopped. 

"Here's where it happened, " he said, "there's a blood-sign. " And hepointed to the Wall at a spot about breast high. A thin dark line, nowider than a blade of grass and about as long, spraying out to nothingat the upper end, leaned along the rock like a native marking. Noother eye had seen it. Not one in a thousand would have seen it. 

"Good, " said Kenset, "you're the man for more of this. "

They crowded around and examined the telltale spray. 

Not one among them but knew it for the stain of blood. 

From that they spread out and back to search the sliding heaps ofdust-like powdery rock-slide that lay everywhere along the walls. 

It took Albright five minutes by Kenset's watch to find the disturbedand clumsily smoothed dump which held all that was mortal of thesnow-packer. 

"Miss Last, " said Kenset as the men began to dig with the spadesbrought along for the purpose, "you had best step back a bit. "

But Tharon pushed nearer. 

"This is my work, " she said with dignity. "I started this, I think. "

It was a pitiful job that Service and those with him had done for OldPete. Rolled head-first into a shallow hole--no doubt with jest andlaughter--it was his booted foot which first came to view, stickinggrotesquely up through the loose slide-stuff. 

It was brief work and grim work that followed, and soon the weazenedform, bent and stiffened into something hardly human, lay in the softpink light on the cañon's floor. 

Jim Banner knelt and examined it carefully and minutely, then everyman in the group did likewise. They found evidence of one simple, staring fact--Old Pete had been shot squarely from behind, a little tothe left. 

The bullet had undoubtedly pierced the heart--a great gaping hole inthe left centre of the breast in front attesting its course. 

"Here, " said Albright, coming back from a short distance down, beneaththe spray on the wall, "here's where something was taken up from th'floor--th' blood he lost, I make no doubt. "

"Gentlemen, --Miss Last, " said Kenset, "I move we all move back andleave the ground to Albright. There is fine work here. "

With one accord the mass moved back, clearing a goodly space. 

In the immediate vicinity there was little chance of doing anything, for Service's bunch, and themselves, had trampled over the soft flooruntil all original traces of the murder were blotted out. 

Albright looked around and seemed to hesitate. 

"Me, alone?" he asked. "Gimme Dick Compos, there. "

"Done, " said Kenset. 

A tall, silent half-breed stepped forward and without another word thetwo began to scan the walls, the floors, the heaps of rotted rock, theloose and tumbled boulders, not yet decomposed, that lined the cut onboth sides. 

They stood in their tracks and looked, and the concentration in theireyes was akin to that in the eyes of a wild animal, hiding, hard-pressed, and looking for a loophole for life. 

The Vigilantes watched them in silence. 

Presently Dick Compos stepped forward, leaned down and searched thewall at the left. Then he went forward, bent over, scanning each inch. He looked above and below, the height of a man's shoulders, his hips, his knees. 

Then he crept back, stopped at a particular upstanding piece of stone, searched it closely--stepped in behind. 

When he came out he looked over at Tharon Last standing at the head ofher people. 

"Some one went along th' Wall here, " he waved a slender brown hand atthe cañon face. "Three signs--here--here--here. "

He indicated the heights he had scanned. They stepped a bit nearer andlooked. Several pairs of Valley eyes saw what Dick Compos had seen, asign so fine that few would have called it that--merely a brushing, asmoothing of the fine-sandstone surface where a man's shoulders, hiships, his knees might have pressed had he stood waiting there. 

A bit nearer the standing pinnacle of rock, they were evident again. 

With one accord they turned and looked down the cañon to where thatthin line sprayed the face. A close shot, such as would be necessaryin the darkness of the cut. Albright and Compos both stepped to therock and stood looking with those narrowed, concentrated eyes. 

Suddenly Albright, looking back across his shoulders, moved like a catand picked up something from ten feet away. 

He held it on his palm--an empty shell, such as fitted a . 44 Smith andWesson. 

He scanned it minutely, turned it over this way and that, looked at itfore and aft. 

"Firin' pin's nicked, " he said, "an' a leetle off centre. "

For ten minutes the thing went from hand to hand. 

Then Kenset gave it to the coroner. 

"There's your clew, Mr. Banner, " he said. "Now we can begin. Let us begoing back to Corvan. "

And so it was that Old Pete, the snow-packer, went back in state tothe Golden Cloud, by relays on men's shoulders down the soundingpasses, through the dead cut, by pack-horse across the levels, lashedstiffly to the saddle, a pitiful burden. 

Tharon Last, riding close after the calm fashion of a strong man inthe face of tragedy, thought pensively of that night in spring whenthis little old man had taken his life in his hands to save her own. 

It was a gift he had given her, nothing less, and she made up her mindthat Old Pete should sleep in peace under the pointing pine at Last'sHolding--and that his cross should also stand beside those other twoin the carved granite. 

Billy, watching, read her mind with the half-tragic eyes of love. 

Kenset, seemingly unconscious, but keenly alive to everything, was atgreat loss to do so. 

He hoped, with a surging tenseness, that this fateful thing wassliding over into his hands to work out, his and Banner's. He knewfull well that he and Banner both were like to be slated for an earlydeath, but he did not care. In Corvan, night had fallen when thecavalcade passed through. 

Bullard of the Golden Cloud had the grace to come out and look at thelittle old man who had worked for him so long and faithfully. Butthat was all. They carried him home to Last's and buried him decentlyat dawn. 

Then the Vigilantes again rode out. At their head was Tharon; thoughboth Kenset and Billy tried to dissuade her. 

At Corvan, Banner went through the town like a wind, asking for thegun of every man he met. By noon every . 44 had been examined, oneshell exploded. Not one left the nicked, uneven sign of the mysterioushammer which had snapped its death into Old Pete's heart. 

When the sun was straight overhead and all Lost Valley was sweet withthe summer haze, the Vigilantes, close packed and silent, swung outtoward the Stronghold. 

It was blue-dusk when they drew up at the corrals beside the fortresshouse. Lounging around in cat-like quiet were some thirty men, riders, gun men, _vaqueros_. 

When Banner called for Courtrey there was a sound of boots on theboard floors, inside, a woman's pleading voice, and the cattle kingcame swinging out, his hands at his waist, his two guns covering thecrowd. 

Tall, straight as a lance, his iron-grey head uncovered, he was astriking figure of a man. His henchmen watched him sharply. At hisside clung the slim woman, Ellen, her milky face thin and tragic. Heshook her loose and faced the newcomers. 

"Well?" he snapped, "what's this?"

"Courtrey, " said Banner, "we're here in th' name o' th' law. We demandt' see them guns o' yours. "

If the knowledge that Jim Banner was a brave man needed confirmation, it had it in that speech. Few men in the world could have made it, andgotten away with it. None in a different setting. Courtrey heard it, but he paid little heed to it at the moment. His eyes went to the faceof Tharon Last and drank in its beauty hungrily. 

Presently he shifted his gaze and regarded Kenset with a cold lightthat was evil. 

"Who wants 'em?" he asked drawlingly. 

"We do. "

"Hell! Want _Courtrey's_ guns! You're modest, Jim. 

"An' what do you want, Tharon?"

In spite of the tenseness of the moment the voice that had laughed atdeath and torture in Round Valley became melting soft as it addressedthe girl. 

"Law!" said Tharon, "Law--th' law I promised you on Baston's porch!"

"Yes? An' how do you think you'll get that? If I nod my head we'lldrive this bunch o' spawn out o' here so quick it'll make your headswim! What do you think you're doin'?"

"I don't _think_. I _know_ now. Know what we can do--what th' lawmeans. "

Courtrey glanced again at Kenset. 

"Got some imported knowledge, I take it. "

"Take it or leave it! Show us them guns!" cried Tharon harshly. 

"I--don't--think--so, " said Courtrey, nodding. 

Like a pair of snakes gliding forward, Wylackie Bob and the Arizonastranger were suddenly in the foreground, hands hanging apparentlyloose and careless, in reality tense as strung wires, ready to snapwith fire and lead. 

The moment was pregnant. The very air seemed charged with danger anddeath. 

Then, with a strange cry, Tharon Last swung sidewise from her saddle, for all the world as if she were breaking under the strain, leaned farover El Rey's shoulder, and the next moment there came a shot, snapping in the stillness. 

With an oath and a lurch Courtrey flung backward, tossed up his rightarm, and fired with his left. His ball went high in the air, wild. Theblood from that tossed right hand spurted over Wylackie Bob besidehim, the gun it had held went hurtling away along the earth. 

There was a movement, a surge, the flash of guns and one of thesettlers tumbled from his saddle, poor Thomas of the doubting heart. Courtrey's men flashed together as one, thundered backward to the widedoorstep, pressed together, waited. The voice of Kenset rang like aclarion. 

"Stop!" he cried, "don't shoot!"

And he swung off his horse to leap for that gun. 

But another was before him. 

With a scream of anguish that rang heaven-high, Ellen shot forward andsnatched it from the spot where it had fallen. 

Tall, white as a ghost in the rose-pink light that was tinged withpurple, she stood, swaying on her feet, and faced them. 

And she put the gun to her temple!

"I ain't got nothin' t' live for, " she said clearly and pitifully, "but Courtrey's life is worth what I got to me. If you don't clear outI'll pull th' trigger. "

She was tragic as death itself. The big blue wells of her eyes wereblack with the spreading pupils. Dark circles lay beneath them. 

Her blue-veined hands were so thin the light seemed to shine throughthem. 

Her long white dress clung to her slim form. From far back by thecorral fence Cleve Whitmore watched her silently, his hands clenchedhard. 

Tharon Last looked at her with wide eyes. She had forgotten all aboutthis woman in the passionate hatred of Courtrey and the desire to pinhis crimes upon him. Now she wet her lips and looked at Ellen long andsilently. The pale lips were quivering, the long arm shook as it heldthe gun. 

"God!" whispered the girl, watching, "she loves him! Like I loved JimLast! Th' pain's in her heart, an' no mistake!"

Then, as if something strong within her folded its iron arm uponitself, she began to back El Rey. "Back out!" she called, "we ain't nowoman-killers!"

With one accord, carefully, watching, the Vigilantes began to back, counting the seconds, expecting each moment to witness the mostpitiful thing Lost Valley with all its crimes, had ever seen. 

Some one lifted the body of Thomas and swung it across a horse. 

Back to the corner of the house, around, they went, and finally, outin front they turned as one man and rode away from the Stronghold--andJim Banner was swearing like a fury, steadily, in a high-pitchedvoice. 

"Failed!" he cried between his oaths, "failed in our biggest job!That's th' gun, all right, all right, an' that damned woman beat us toit! Beat us to it with her fool's courage an' her sickenin' love! Oh, t' hell with Courtrey an' all this Valley! I'm a-goin' t' move downth' Wall, s'help me!"

But Tharon Last forged to his side and gripped his arm in her strongfingers. 

"Shut up, Jim Banner, " she said tensely. "You've only begun. That'sth' gun, I make no doubt, an' Ellen knew it--but if we're worthkillin' we'll dig into this harder'n ever. Here's poor Thomas, makesone more notch on my record. I'm not sayin' quit! An' you're th'bravest man in Corvan, too!"

At Last's Holding the Vigilantes stopped for rest and food. 

They had been in saddle the better part of forty-eight hours. 

Young Paula, José and Anita set up a steaming meal, and they ate likefamished men, by relays at the big table in the dining room. 

Tharon Last sat quietly at the board's head throughout the meal, pensive, thinking of Ellen, but grimly planning for the future. 

And Billy and Kenset watched her, each with a secret pain at hisheart. 

"Lord, Lord, " said Billy to himself, "she's listenin' when he speakslike she never listened to any one before!"

In Kenset's mind drilled over and over again the ceaseless thought "Ahand or a heart--she could hit them both with ease. It's true, true, --she's a gun woman! Oh, Tharon, Tharon!" and he did not know hespoke her name beneath his breath. 

But other things were crowding forward--he was leaning forward tellingthat circle of grim, lean faces, that if they could not handle thisthing themselves, there were those in the big world of below whocould--that there were men of the Secret Service who could find thatgun no matter where Courtrey or Ellen hid it, that Lost Valley, nomatter what its isolation or its history, was yet in the U. S. A. , andcould be tamed. 

Then the Vigilantes were gone with jangle of spur and bit-chain, andhe was the last to go, standing by Captain in the dim starlight. Tharon stood beside him, and for some unaccountable reason the grimpurpose of their acquaintance seemed to drift away, to leave themtogether, alone under the stars, a man and a maid. Kenset stood for along moment and looked at the faint outline of her face. She was stillin her riding clothes, her head bare with its ribbon half untied inthe nape of her slender neck. 

The tree-toads were singing off by the springhouse and the cattle inthe big corrals made the low, ceaseless night-sounds common to aherd. 

The riders were gone, the _vaqueros_ were at their posts around theresting stock, the low adobe house was settling into the quiet of thenight. 

Miserably Kenset looked at this slip of a girl. 

She was strange to him, unfathomable. There were depths beneath thechanging blue eyes which appalled him. How would he feel toward herwhen the thing was done--when she had killed Courtrey?

But she must not be allowed to do it. Not though it took his life. 

If she was pledged to this thing, he was no less pledged to itsprevention. 

He felt a sadness within him as he saw the soft curve of her cheek, the outline of her tawny head. 

With an impulse which he could not govern he reached out suddenly andtook her hands in his and pressed them against his heart. The poundingof that heart was noticeable through her hands into his. 

But he did not speak--he could not. 

But he had no need. He could have said nothing that would havecleared the situation, would have told himself or her what was in thatpounding heart of his--for to save his life he did not know. 

And Tharon frowned in the darkness and drew her hands from under thosepressing ones. 

"Mr. Kenset, " she said steadily, "you're always tryin' to make meweak, to break me down with words an' looks an' touches. These handso' yours, --_damn 'em_, they _do_ make me weak! Don't put 'em on meagain!"

And with a sudden, sharp savagery she struck his hands off his breast, whirled away in the darkness and was gone. 

CHAPTER IX

SIGNAL FIRES IN THE VALLEY

Kenset, two days later, gave Sam Drake a check for five hundreddollars and a letter, unpostmarked but sealed with tape and wax. Drake, who owned some half-breed Ironwoods, rode the best one down theWall. 

Kenset had cautioned him not to talk before he left--he feared Drake'spropensity for speech. But he was the only man in Lost Valley whom hefelt he could approach. 

With the courier's departure he rode back to the Holding and toldTharon and Conford what he had done. 

"These men are the best to be had, " he said, "and they will goanywhere on earth for money. "

But Tharon frowned and struck a fist into a soft palm. 

"What you mean?" she cried, "by takin' my work out of my hands likethis? I won't have it! I won't wait!"

"What I meant when I caught your bridle that day in the glade, "answered the man, "to stop you from bloodshed. "

Then he went back to his cabin and his interrupted work and sethimself to wait in patience for the return of Drake. 

 * * * * *

But in Lost Valley a leaven was rising. It had begun insidiously towork with the appearance of Kenset in Tharon's band at Courtrey'sdoorstep. It burst up like a mushroom with a chance remark made byLola of the Golden Cloud--Lola, who had seen, since that night inspring when Tharon Last stood in the door and promised to "get" herfather's killer, that Courtrey was slipping from her. A woman likeLola is hard to deceive. 

Much experience had taught her to feel the change of winds in thematter of allegiance. 

She knew that surely and swiftly this man had gone down the path ofunreasoning love, that he would give anything he possessed, doanything possible, to win for himself this slim mistress of Last'sHolding. 

Therefore she played the one card she held, hoping to rouse the bully, and did just the thing she was trying to avert. 

"Buck, " she said, her black head on his shoulder, her dark eyeswatching covertly his careless face, "the Last girl is lost to everyValley man. Sooner or later she'll leave the country, mark my word, with this Forest Service fellow, for she's in love with him, thoughshe doesn't know it yet. "

With a slow movement Courtrey loosed his arm about Lola and lifted herfrom him. His eyes were narrowed as he looked into her face. 

"For God's sake!" he said, "what makes you think that?"

"Knowledge, " said Lola, "long knowledge of women and men. "

"If I thought that, " said Courtrey slowly, his eyes losing sight ofher as he seemed to look beyond her. "If--I--thought that--why, hell!If that's th' truth--why, it--it's th' lever!"

And he rose abruptly, though he had just settled himself in Lola'sapartment for a pleasant chat, as was his habit whenever he rode infrom the Stronghold. 

"Lola, " he said presently, "I might's well tell you that I'm plannin'to have this girl for mine, --_mine_, you understand, legally, by law. I can't have her like I've had you. She'd blow my head off th' firsttime I stopped holdin' her hands. " He laughed at the picture he hadconjured, then went on. 

"An' so I feel grateful to you, old girl, for that remark. It sets methinkin'. " And he stooped and kissed her on the lips. The womanreturned the kiss, a wonderful caress, slow, soft, alluring, but theman did not notice. 

His face was flushed, his eyes studying. 

Then he swung quickly out through the Golden, Cloud, and Lola slippedlimply down on a couch and covered her ashen cheeks with her hands. 

"Oh, Buck!" she whispered brokenly, "Oh, Buck! Buck!"

 * * * * *

Courtrey went straight home, still, cold, thinking hard. His henchmenleft him in solitude after the first word or two. They knew him well, and that something was brewing. 

At midnight that night he roused Wylackie Bob, Black Bart and the manwho was known as Arizona, and the four of them went out on the levelsfor a secret talk. 

The next day the master of the Stronghold rode away on Bolt. As heleft, Ellen, standing in the doorway like a pale ghost, lifted hertragic eyes to his face with the look of a faithful dog. 

"Where you goin', Buck?" she asked timidly. 

"Off, " said the man shortly. 

"Ain't you goin'--goin' to kiss me?"

He laughed cruelly. 

"Not after what I ben a-hearin', I ain't!"

She sprang forward, catching at his knee. 

"What--what you ben a-hearin'? There ain't nothin' about me you coulda-heard, Buck, dear! Nothin' in this world! I ben true to you as yourshadow!"

Every soul within hearing knew the words for the utter and absolutetruth, yet Courtrey looked at Wylackie Bob, at Arizona, and laughed. 

"Like hell, you have!" he said, struck the Ironwood and was gonearound the corner of the house with the sound of thunder. 

Ellen wet her lips and looked around like a wounded animal. 

Her brother Cleve, saddling up a little way apart, cast a longstudying glance at Wylackie and Arizona. He jerked the cinch sosavagely that the horse leaped and struck. 

For four days there was absolute dearth at the Stronghold. 

Courtrey did not return. Ellen timidly tried to find out from the_vaqueros_ where he had gone, but they evaded her. 

Then, on the morning of that day, Steptoe Service, grinning andimportant, came to the Stronghold and served on Ellen a summons insuit for divorce. 

She met him at the door and invited him in, timidly and shyly, but hestood on the stone and made known his business. 

At first she did not understand, was like a child told something toodeep for its intellect to grasp, bewildered. 

Then, when Service made it brutally plain, she slipped down alongthe doorpost like a wilted lily and lay long and white on thesand-scrubbed floor. Her women, loving her desperately, gathered herup and shut the door in the sheriff's face. 

They sent for Cleve, and not even the presence of Black Bart in thenear corral could keep the brother from running into the darkened roomwhere Ellen lay, too stunned to rally. 

"Damn him!" he gritted, falling on his knees beside her, "this'swhat's come of it! I ben lookin' for something of its like. Let himgo. We'll leave Lost Valley, Ellen. We'll go out an' start anotherlife, begin all over again. We're both too young to be floored by aman like Courtrey. Let him go. "

But the woman turned her waxen face to the wall and shook her head. 

"There ain't no life in this world for me without Buck, " shewhispered. "If he don't want me, I don't want myself. "

"You dont' want to hang to him, do you, Sis?" begged the man, "don'twant to stay at th' Stronghold after this?"

"Rather stay here under Buck's feet like th' poorest of his dogs thanbe well-off somewheres where I couldn't never see him again, neverlook in his face. "

"God!" groaned Cleve, "you love him like that!"

"Yes, " said Ellen, wearily, "like that. "

"Then by th' Eternal!" swore Cleve softly, "here you'll stay if ittakes all th' law in th' United States to keep you here. I'll fileyour answer tomorrow--protest to th' last word!"

And he rode into Corvan, only to find that Courtrey and Courtrey'sinfluence had been there before him, that a cold sense of disasterseemed to permeate the town and all those whom he met therein. 

He found the "Court House crowd" tight-lipped and careful. 

And Ben Garland set the day for trial at a ridiculously early date, for all the world as if the thing had been cut and dried at somesecret conclave. 

Courtrey was playing his game with a daring hand, true to his name andhabit. 

Dusk was falling in Lost Valley. The long blue shadows had swept outfrom the Rockface, covering first the homesteads under the Wall, thenthe great grazing stretches, then Corvan, then the open levels again, then the mouth of Black Coulee and lastly sweeping eastward to hushthe life at Last's Holding in that soft, sweet quiet which comes withthe day's work done. 

Out at the corrals Billy and Conford, Jack and Bent and Curly, put thefinishing touches to the routine of precaution which the Holding neverrelaxed, day or night. 

Inside the dusky living room where the bright blankets glowed on thewalls and the _ollas_ hung in the deep window places, Tharon Last satat the little old melodeon and played her nameless tunes. She did notlook at the yellowed keys. Instead her blue eyes, deep and glowing, wandered down along the southern slopes and she was lost inunconscious dreams. Once again she saw the trim figure of the forestman as she had seen him come stiffly into her range of vision that dayin Corvan. She recalled his quiet eyes, dark and speaking, the odd wayhis hair went straight back from his forehead. She wondered why sheshould think of him at all. 

He was against her--was a force that played directly against all herplans of life, her precepts. Moreover, she had told him she feared hewas soft--like a woman--some women--that there was in him a lack ofthe straight man-courage which was the only standard in Lost Valley. 

And yet--she waited on his word, somehow--held her hand from her swornduty for a while, waiting--for what?

Ah, she knew! Deep in the soul of her she knew, vaguely and dimly tobe sure, but she knew that it was for the time when the die should becast--that he might prove himself for what he was. 

For some vague reason she knew she would not kill Courtrey until thisman stood by. 

She wondered what Courtrey meant by this strange quiet following thetragic moment at the Stronghold steps when the Vigilantes hadchallenged him and ridden away. 

And then, all suddenly, into her dreaming there came the sound of ahorse's hoofs on the sounding-board without--slow hoofs, uncertain. For one swift second that sound, coming out of the dusk with itsuncertainty, sent a chill of memory down her nerves. So had come ElRey that night in spring when he brought Jim Last home to die!

She rose swiftly and silently and stepped to the western door. 

There, in the shadows and the softness of coming night, a horse loomedalong the green stretch, came plodding up to stop and stand beforeher, a brown horse, with the stirrups of his saddle hung on thepommel, his rein tied short up--Captain, the good, common friend ofKenset--of the--foothills!

Tharon felt the blood pour back upon her heart and stay there for anawful moment. She put up a hand and touched her throat, and to saveher life she did not know why this sudden sickening fear should comeupon her. 

She had seen men killed, had known tragedy and loss and heartache, butnever before had she seen the crest of the distant Wall to dance uponthe pale skyline so. Then she whirled into the house and her youngvoice pealed out a call--Billy, Conford, Bent--she drew them to herrunning through the deep house--to point to the silent messenger andquestion them with wide blue eyes where fear rose up like a livingthing. 

Billy at her shoulder, looked not at Captain, but at her. 

A sigh lifted his breast, but he stifled it at birth and turned withthe others back toward the corrals. Tharon, running toward the deeproom where the Virgin stood in Her everlasting beauty, unfastened hersoft white dress as she ran. Inside she flung herself on her kneesbefore the Holy Mother and poured out a trembling prayer. 

"Not that! Oh, Mary, not that! Let it not be _that_!" she whisperedthickly. Then she was up, into her riding clothes--was out where theboys were hurriedly saddling the Finger Marks. Presently she was on ElRey and shooting like a silver shaft in the summer dusk down along thegreen levels toward the east. They rode in silence, Conford, Bent, Jack, Curly, Billy and herself, and a thousand thoughts were boilingmiserably in two hearts. 

El Rey, Golden, Redbuck, Drumfire, Westwind and Sweetheart, they wentdown along the sounding dark plain, a magnificent band. The wholeearth seemed to resound to the thunder of their going, and for once intheir lives her beauties could not run fast enough for the mistress ofLast's. 

They went like the wind itself, and yet they were slow to Tharon. 

Out of the open levels there swung up to meet them and to fade intothe night, the standing willows by the Silver Hollow. The slopingstretches began to lift, dotted by the oaks and digger-pines for whosesake Kenset had come to Lost Valley. They shot through them, up alongthe sharply lifting skirts of the hills, in between the guarding pinesthat formed the gateway to the little glade where the singing streamwent down and the cabin stood at the head. Tharon's throat was tight, as if a hand pressed hard upon it. The high tops of the pines seemedto cut the sky grotesquely. There was no light at the dim log house, no sound in the silent glade. Off to the right they heard the low ofthe little red cow which served the forest man with milk. 

They pounded to a sliding stop in the cabin's yard and Conford calledsharply into the silent darkness. 

"Kenset! Hello--Kenset!"

Tharon held her breath and listened. There was no sound except a nightbird calling from the highest pine-tip. 

Carefully the men dismounted. 

"You stay up, Tharon, dear, " the foreman said quietly, "until we lookaround. "

But to save her life the girl could not. What was this trembling thatseized her limbs? Why did the stars, come out on the purple sky, shiftso strangely to her eyes? She slipped off El Rey and stood by hisshoulder waiting. Conford struck a flare and lit a candle, holding itcarefully before him, shielding it with his palm behind it to throwthe gleam away from his face, into the cabin. The pale light illuminedthe whole interior, and it was empty. The keen eyes of the riders wentover every inch of space before they entered--along the walls, in thebed, under the tables. Then they filed in and Tharon followed, gazingaround with eyes that ached behind their lids. There on the northernwall between the windows, was the great spread of the beautifulpicture she had helped the forest man to hang. There were his books onthe table's edge. She looked twice--the last one on the pile at acertain corner was just as she had placed it there, a trifle crookedwith the edge, but neatly in line with those beneath it. There was thebig chair in which she had waited while he made the little meal--therewas his desk in the ingle nook, his maps upon it. It was all sofamiliar, so filled with his personality, that Tharon felt the verypower of his dark eyes, smiling, grave----

"Hello!" said Jack Masters suddenly. "Burt, what's this?"

Conford stepped quickly around the table and held his candle down. 

Tharon pushed forward and looked over the leaning shoulders. 

There on the brown and green grass rug a rich dark stain wasdrying--blood, some three days old. 

Then, indeed, did the universe sag and darken to the Mistress ofLast's. 

She put out a hand to steady herself and found it grasped in thestrong one of Billy, who stood at her shoulder like her shadow. 

"Steady!" he whispered. "Steady, Tharon. "

She drew her trembling fingers across her eyes, wet her lips whichfelt dry as ashes. The same ache that had come with Jim Last's finalsmile was already in her heart, but intensified a thousand times. Shefelt all suddenly, as if there was nothing in Lost Valley worth while, nothing in all the world! That drying stain at her feet seemed to shutout the sun, moon and stars with its sinister darkness. She felt anausea at the pit of her stomach, a need for air in her crampedlungs. 

Strange, she had never known that one could be so detached from allfamiliar things, could seem so lost in a sea of stupid agony. Why wasit so? If this dark blot of blood had come from the veins of Billynow, of Conford, or Jack or Curly, her own men, would she have losther grip like this? And then she became dully conscious that Billy hadput her in the big chair by the table and had joined the others intheir exhaustive search for any clew to the tragedy. She saw the moonrising over the tops of the pine trees at the glade's edge, heard thelittle song of the running stream. 

That was the little stream that Kenset had looked for in his idealspot, this was the home he had made for himself, these were the thingsof the other life he had known, these soft, dark pictures, the bookson the tables, the brass things shining in the light from the lamp. . . . She knew that she was cold in the summer night, that she was staringmiserably out of the open door, scarcely conscious of the scatteredvoices of her men, searching, searching, hunting, in widening circlesoutside. . . . Then they came back talking in low voices and she rousedherself desperately. Her limbs were stiff when she rose from the bigchair, her hands were icy. 

"No use, Tharon, " said Conford quietly, "we can't find a damned thing. If Courtrey's bunch killed Kenset they made a clean get-away with allevidence. That much has th' new law done in th' Valley--killed th'insolence of th' gun man. Let's go home. "

It was Billy, faithful and still, who helped her--for the first timein her life!--to mount a horse. She went up on El Rey as if shewere old. Then they were riding down the smooth floor of the littleglade, leaving that darkened cabin at its head to stand in tragicloneliness. 

She saw the tops of the guarding pines at the gateway, rode outbetween them. The moon was up in majesty, and by its light JackMasters suddenly leaned down to look at something, pulled up, sweptdown from his saddle, cowboy fashion, hanging by a foot and a hand, and picked up something which he examined keenly. 

"Look, " he said quickly, "th' beet-man's badge!"

He held out on his palm a small dark object, the copper-colouredshield which had shone on Kenset's breast!

Its double-tongued fastener was twisted far awry, as if it had beenwrenched away by violence. 

Conford turned and looked back to the cabin, as if he measured thedistance. 

"There's been funny work here as sure's hell, " he said profoundly. 

Then they rode on, all silent, thinking. It was near dawn when theyrode up along the sounding-board and put in at Last's. Billy reachedup tender arms and took Tharon off El Rey, and for the first time shegave herself wearily into them as if she were done. 

As she opened the door into her own dusky room the pale Virgin, touched by a silver shaft of the sinking moon, stood out in startling, ethereal beauty, Her meek hands folded on Her breast. Tharon Laststumbled forward and sank in a heap at Her feet, her arms about thestatue's knees. 

"Hail--Mary--intercede for--him--" she faltered, and then the shiningVirgin, the dim mystery of the shadowy room, faded out to leave herfor the first time in her strong life, a bit of senseless clay. 

When she again opened her eyes the little winds of day were fanningher cheeks and old Anita was tugging at her shoulders, voluble withfright. 

To the riders of Last's the tragedy was nothing more than any otherthat they had known in Lost Valley. They went about their work asusual. 

Only Billy was filled with a sickening anguish at the knowledge thathe was not able to offer one smallest saving straw to the girl in thebig house--for Billy knew. 

All day Tharon sat like a rock in her own room, staring with unseeingeyes at the blank whitewashed walls. She did not yet know what ailedher, why this killing, more than that of poor Harkness, should makeher sick to her soul's foundations. Yet it was so. Even the thought ofher sworn duty was vague before her for a time. Then it seemed to comeforward out of the mass of fleeting memories--Kenset that day atBaston's steps shapely, trim, halted--Kenset laughing over the littlemeal beside the table where the books lay--Kenset grasping hershoulder when she whirled to mount El Rey and challenge the Strongholdsingle-handed--to come forward like a calming, steadying thing andturn the pain to purpose. 

There was no one now to hold her back, no vital hands to press hersupon a beating heart, to make her untrue to her given word!

Now she could go out, reckless and grim in her utter disregard of theoutcome, and kill Courtrey where he stood. The time had come. Thereshould be another cross in the granite beneath the pointing pine. 

As if the whirling universe settled back to its ordered place theright proportion came back to her vision, the breath seemed to lightenher holden lungs. 

Once again the girl arose and steadied herself, smoothed her tawnyhair, looked at her hands to find them free from the shaking that hadweakened them. 

She dressed herself and went out among her people, quiet and pale. 

The twilight had fallen and all the western part of the Valley wasblue with shadow. Only on Kenset's foothills was the rosy lightglowing, a tragic, aching light, it seemed to her. She saw all thelittle world of Lost Valley with new eyes, sombre eyes, in which therewas no sense of its beauty. She wondered anxiously how soon she couldmeet Courtrey, and where. And then with the suddenness of an orderedplay, the question was answered for her, for out of the dusk and thepurple shadows a Pomo rider came on a running pony and halted out astone's throw, calling for the "Señorita, " his hands held up in tokenof friendliness. 

Without a thought of treachery Tharon went out to him and took theletter he handed her--swinging around for flight as the paper left hishand, for the riders of Last's were known all up and down the land. This dusky messenger took no chances he could avoid. He was well downalong the slope by the time the boys came clanking around the house. 

And Tharon, standing in the twilight like a slim white ghost, wasstaring over their heads, her lips ashen, the scrawled lettertrembling in her hands. For this is what she read, straining her youngeyes in the fading light. 

 "Tharon. You must know by now that I mean bisness. All this Vigilant bisness ain't a-goin' to help things eny. If it hadn't of ben that I love you, what you think I'd a-done to that bunch? That's th' truth. I ben holdin' off thinkin' you'd come to your senses an' see that Buck Courtrey ain't to be met with vilence. Now I'm playin' my trump card--now, tonight. 

 "Lola says you love this dude from below. That don't cut no ice with me. I ain't carin' for no love from you at present. All I want is _you_. I can make you love me once I've got you safe at th' Stronghold. I ain't never failed with no woman yet. An' I mean to have you, fair means or foul. 

 "Rather have you fair. So here's my last word. 

 "This Kenset ain't dead--yet. I went and took him. I've got him safe as hell in the Cañon Country. Ain't no man in th' Valley can find God's Cup but me. He's guarded an' there's a lookout on th' peak above th' Cup that can see a signal fire at th' Stronghold. One fire out by my big corral means 'Send him out by False Ridge with ten days' grub. ' Two fires means 'Put a true bullet in his head an' leave him there. ' Now, here's the word. I've got a case fixed up to divorce Ellen, legal. If you'll marry me soon's I'm free, I'll build one fire out by that corral. 

 "If you say yes, you build one fire out by th' cottonwoods to th' left of the Holdin'. I'm watchin' an' will see it at once. You can see for yourself I mean bisness, as if you'll watch too, you'll see that one fire here. 

 COURTREY. "

For a long moment the Mistress of Last's stood in profound quiet, asif she could not move. She was held in a trance like those dreadfulnight-dreams when one is locked in deadly inertia, helpless. The netwhich had been weaving in Courtrey's fertile brain was finished, flung, and closing in upon her before she knew of its existence. Anawe of his cleverness, his trickery, gripped her in a clutch of ice. The whole fabric of her own desires and plans and purposes seemed tocrumple like the white ash in a dead fire, leaving her nothing. Shehad been out-witted instead of outfought. One more evidence of theman's baseness, his unscrupulous cunning. 

He played his trump card and it was a winner, sweeping the table--forshe knew before she finished that difficult reading that she would doanything in all the world to stop that "true bullet" in the heart thathad pounded beneath her open palms. . . . Knew she would break her givenword to Jim Last--knew she would forsake the Holding--that she wouldcrawl to Courtrey's feet and kiss his hand, if only he would spareKenset of the foothills, would send him out to that vague world ofbelow, never to return!

She swayed drunkenly on her feet for a time that seemed ages long. Then life came back in her with a rush. She broke the nightmare dreamand gasped out a broken command to her faithful ones. 

"Billy!" she said thickly, "Oh, Billy! If you love me, run! Run an'build a fire--one fire!--only _one_ fire, Billy, dear--out by th'cottonwoods to th' left--of th' Holdin'!"

Then she went and sat limply down on the step at the western door, leaned her head against the deep adobe wall, and fell to weeping as ifthe very heart in her would wash itself away in tears. 

And Billy, numb with anguish but true to the love he bore her, wentswiftly out and set that beacon glowing. Its red light flaring againstthe blue darkness of the falling night seemed like a bodeful omen ofsorrow and disaster, of death and failure and despair. 

Tharon on the sill roused herself to watch it leap and glow, thenturned her deep eyes to where she knew the Stronghold lay. 

Presently out upon the distant black curtain of the night there flaredthat other fire, signal of life to Kenset somewhere in the CañonCountry--and then her lips drew into a thin hard line and shestraightened her young form stiffly up, put a hand hard upon herbreast. 

"A little time, Courtrey!" she whispered to herself, "Jus' a littletime an' luck, an' I'll give you th' double-cross or die, damn yoursoul to hell!"

Billy, coming softly in along the adobe wall, caught the whisper, felt rather than heard its meaning, and turned back with the step of acat. 

 * * * * *

An hour later, when all the Holding was quiet for the night, driftingto early rest after the day's hard work, the Mistress of Last's, booted, dressed in riding clothes, her fair head covered by asombrero, her daddy's guns at her hips, crept softly to the gate of ElRey's own corral. She went like a thief, crouching, watching, withouta sound, and saddled the big stallion in careful softness. She led himgently out and around toward the cottonwoods, away from the house. When she was well away she put foot to stirrup and went up as the kingleaped for his accustomed flight. 

But Tharon pulled him down. She wanted no thunder on the sounding-boardtonight. But soft as she had been, as careful, there was one at theHolding who followed her every act, who went for a horse, too, whosaddled Drumfire in silence and who crept down the sounding-board--Billythe faithful. Far down along the plain toward the Black Coulee he letthe red roan out, so that the girl, keen of hearing as of sight, caughtthe following beat of hoofs, stopped, listened, understood and reined ElRey up to wait. 

And soon out of the shadows cast by the eastern ramparts, where themoon was rising, she saw the rider coming. A quick mist of tearssuffused her eyes, a sick feeling gripped her heart. 

Here was another mixed in the sorry tangle! She had always knownvaguely that Billy was one with her, that his heart was the deep heartof her friend. 

He was the one she always wanted near her in times of stress, it waswith him she liked to ride in the Big Shadow when the sun went downbehind the Cañon Country. 

But now she did not want him. She had a keen desire to see him safelyout of this--this which was to be the end, one way or the other, ofthe blood-feud between the Stronghold and Last's. 

Now as he loped up and stopped abreast of her in silence, she reachedout a hand and caught his in a close clasp. 

"I don't want you, Billy, dear, " she said miserably, "not because Idon't love you, but because I ain't a-goin' to see you shot byCourtrey's gang. This is one time, boy, when I want you to leave mealone, to go back without me. "

The rider shook his head against the stars. 

"Couldn't do it, little girl, " he said wistfully, "you know I couldn'tdo it. "

"Ain't I your mistress, Billy?" asked Tharon sternly. "Ain't I yourboss?"

"Sure are, " said the boy with conviction. 

"Ain't I always been a good boss to you?"

"Best in th' world. Good as Jim Last. "

"Then, " said Tharon sharply, "it's up to you to take my orders. Iorder you now--go back. "

The cowboy leaned down suddenly and kissed the hand he held. 

"I'm at your shoulder, Tharon, dear, " he said with simple dignity, "like your shadow. At your foot like the dogs that never forsake th'herds. I couldn't go back an' leave you--not though I died for ittonight. 

"We'll say no more about it. I don't know where you're goin', butwherever it is, there I'm goin', too, an' on my way. You can tell meor not, just as you please, but let's go. "

For a long time Tharon Last sat in the starlight and watched thecrests of the distant mountains fringed with the silver of the moonthat was rising behind them, and her throat ached with tears. Allthese things that hurt her, these unknown, tangled things that sheknew dimly meant Life, had come to her with the advent of Kenset inLost Valley. She wished passionately for a fleeting moment that he hadnever come, that the old swinging, rushing life of the ranges hadnever known his holding influence. Then she felt again the hammeringof his heart beneath her palms, and nothing mattered in all the worldbeside. 

It was a thing beyond her ken, something ordered by fate. She must goon, blindly as running waters, regardless of all that drowned. 

But she loosed her hand from Billy's, leaned to his shoulder, put herarm about his neck and drew his face to hers. Softly, tenderly, shekissed him upon the lips, and she did not know that that was thecruelest thing she had ever done in all her kindly life, did not seethe deathly pallor that overspread his face. 

"I'm goin' to th' Cañon Country, Billy, " she said simply, "to find th'Cup o' God an' Kenset. "

Then she straightened in her saddle and gave El Rey the rein. 

 * * * * *

It was two of the clock by the starry heavens when these two ridersentered the blind opening in the Rockface and disappeared. El Rey, themighty, tossed his great head and whistled, stamped his hoofs in thedead sift of the silencing floor. He had never before lost sight ofthe sky, never felt other breath in his nostrils than the keen plain'swind. 

Now he shook himself and halted, went on again, and again halted, tobe urged forward by Tharon's spurred heels in his flanks. Up throughthe eerie pass they went without speech, for each heart was filled tooverflowing with thoughts and fears. 

To Billy there was something fateful, bodeful in the dead darkness, the stillness. It seemed to him as if he left forever behind him theopen life of the ranges, the gay and careless days of riding afterTharon's cattle. 

For five years he had lived at Last's, under master and mistress, content, happy. The half-remembered world of below had never calledhim. The light on the table under the swinging lamp with Tharon's facetherein, the murmur of the stream through her garden, the whisper ofthe cottonwoods, these had been sufficient. He had, subconsciously, thanked his Maker for these things, had served them with a wholeheart. They had been his all, his life. Now the cottonwoods seemed faraway, remote, the life of the deep ranch house a thing of long ago. All these things had given way to something that sapped the sunlightfrom the air, the very blueness from the vaulted skies, something thathad come with the quiet man of the pine-tree badge. So Billy sighed inthe darkness and sat easily on Drumfire, his slim left hand fidgetingwith the swinging rein. 

And Tharon was lost, too, in a maze of thoughts. She sat straightas a lance, tense, alive, keen, staring into the narrow bore of the highceiled cut, thinking feverishly. Was Kenset really alive? HadCourtrey been square with her? Or was he even now lying stiff andstark somewhere in the high cuts, his dark eyes dull with death, thatbeating heart forever stilled? She caught her breath with a whistlingsigh, felt her head swim at the picture. If he was--_if_--_he_--_was_--!She fingered the big guns at her hip and savagery took hold of her. Courtrey's left wrist to match his right. Then some pretty work abouthim to make him wait--then a shot through his stomach--he would spitblood and reel, but he wouldn't die--the butcher!--for a little while, and she would taunt him with Harkness--and Jim. Last shot in theback--with Old Pete--and with--with Kenset--the one man--Oh, the oneman in all the world whose quiet smile was unforgettable, whose vitalhands were upon hers now, like ghost-hands, would always be upon hersif she lived to be old like Anita or died at dawn today! And Kensethad counseled her to peace! To keep the stain of blood from her ownhands! She laughed aloud, suddenly, a ghastly sound that made coldchills go down her rider's spine, for it was the mad laughter of theblood-lust! Billy knew that Jim Last in his best moments was neverso coldly a killer as his daughter was tonight. 

So they traversed the roofed cut and came out into the starlight ofthe first cañon. Up this they went in single file. They passed theplace where Albright had found the dark spray on the cañon wall, thestanding rock where the gun with the untrue firing pin had kicked awayits shell. A little farther on was the disturbed and trampled heap ofslide which had held Old Pete's body. In silence they rode on, thehorses' hoofs striking a million echoes from the reverberatingcrosscuts. 

The moon was shining above, but here there was only a sifted light, aghostly radiance of starlight and painted walls. Tharon, riding ahead, went unerringly forward as if she traveled the open ways of the Valleyfloor. She turned from the main cañon toward the left and passed themouth of Old Pete's snow-bed. Between this and that standing spire andpinnacle she went, with a strong certainty that presently stirredBilly to speech. 

"Tharon, dear, " he said gently, "hadn't we better leave a mark or twoalong this-a-way? Ain't you got no landmarks?"

"Can if you want, " the girl said briefly, "I don't need landmarks. "

"Then how you know the way? There ain't no one knows th' CañonCountry--but Courtrey. "

"I don't know it, " she said simply but with profound conviction. "I'm_feelin'_ it, Billy. I know I'm goin' straight to th' Cup o' God. I'mblind as a bat, it seems, yet goin' straight. "

She lifted a hand and crossed herself. 

"Goin' straight--Mary willin'--an' I'll come back straight. It lies upthere an' to th' left again. " She made a wide gesture that swept upand out, embracing the towering walls, the half-seen peaks against thestars. 

Billy shut his lips and said no more. 

Up there lay False Ridge, the sinister, dropping spine that came downfrom the uplands outside where the real great world began, and luredthose who traveled down it to crumbling precipice and yawning pit, tosliding slope and slant that, once ridden down, could never be scaledagain, according to the weird stories that were told of it. 

But if Tharon went to the Cañons, there lay his trail, too. If shewent down False Ridge to death in the pits and waterless cuts, heasked no better lot than to follow--the faithful dog at her foot, theshadow at her shoulder. 

And so it was that dawn crept up the blue-velvet of the night sky andsent its steel-blue light deep in the painted splits, and they rodeunerringly forward up the sounding passes. 

When the light increased enough to show the way they came abruptly tothe spot where it was necessary to leave the horses. The floor of thecañon up which they were traveling lifted sharply in one huge step, breast-high to a man. 

Tharon in the lead halted and looked for a moment all up and down thewondrous maze of pale, tall openings that encompassed them all round. 

She turned in her saddle and looked back the way they had come. Therewas darker shadow, going downward, but here and there those palemouths gaped, long ribbons of space dropping from the heights abovedown to their level. 

Up any one a man might turn and lose himself completely, for they inturn were cut and ribboned with other mouths, leaving spires and wallsand faces a thousand-fold on every hand. 

Tharon, even in the tensity and preoccupation of the hour, drew in herbreath and the pupils of her blue eyes spread. 

"Th' Cañon Country!" she said softly, "I always knew it would be likethis--too great to tell about! I knew it would hold somethin' forme--always knew it--either life an' its best--or death. "

There was a simple grandeur about the earnest words, and Billy, hisface grey in the steely light, felt the heart in his breast thrillwith their portent. 

No matter what the Cañons held for her--either that gloriousfulfillment of life, or the simple austerity of death--he would have apart in it, would have served her to the last, true to the love hebore her, true to himself. 

And nothing--nothing under God's heaven, save death itself--could everwipe out the memory of that kiss, given from the depths of her lovingheart, the sign-manuel of her undying affection and friendship, theone and only touch of her inviolate red lips that he had ever knownthe Mistress of Last's to give to any man, save Jim Last himself. 

He wiped a hand across his forehead, damp with more than the nightcold, and dismounted. 

"We'll leave th' horses here, " he said. "I've an extra rope to stringacross an' make a small corral. "

He did not add that he would fasten this slim barrier lightly, so thata horse that really wanted to break out--in the frantic madness ofthirst, say, --might do so. 

Then he set about his task--but Tharon stood with strained eyeslooking up--and up--and ever up to the dimly appearing, looming spineof False Ridge. 

Over there, she knew in her heart, lay the hidden Cup o' God, with itssecret, the secret that meant all the world to her. 

CHAPTER X

THE UNTRUE FIRING PIN

Tharon turned back and looked long at El Rey. She wondered if shewould ever see the great silver-blue stallion again, ever feel thewind singing by her cheeks, ever hear the thunder of his running onthe hollow ranges. She saw the stain of Jim Last's blood on the bigstudded saddle and a pain like death stabbed her. 

"I'll get him, " she had promised on that tragic day, "so help me God!"and had made the sign of the Cross. 

What did she now?

Cast away all certainty of that fulfilment because a man--a man almosta stranger--lay somewhere in the Cañon Country, crawled somewherealong False Ridge, perhaps, wounded and sick with fever. 

"Oh, hurry!" she whispered as Billy made secure his last light knot inthe rope gateway across the cut and came to join her. 

She scrambled up the bench in the cañon floor, gained her feet andwent forward at a rush. 

"Steady, Tharon, " warned the rider, "you ain't used to climbin'. Saveyour wind. "

It was true advice. Long before the sun was high overhead and day wasbroad in the painted cracks she had begun to heed it. As she swung upthe ever lifting floors, threaded this way and that between the thinintercepting walls that towered hundreds of feet straight up, she casther wide eyes up in wonder. Always she had watched the Cañon Countryfrom her western door, always it had held her with a binding lure. 

There was that about its mystery, its austere majesty, that hadthrilled her heart from babyhood. She had pictured it a thousand timesand always it had looked just so--pink and grey and saffron, pale andmisty with light when the sun was high, blue and wonderful and blackas the luminary lowered, leaving the quick shadows. 

Hour after hour they climbed, mostly in silence, speaking now and thensome necessary word of caution, of assent. This way and that Tharonturned, but always moving upward in the same direction. From time totime Billy dropped a shred of the red kerchief about his neck, touchedthe soft walls with the handle of the knife he carried. This left amark plain as a trail to his trained eyes. 

At noon they halted for a little rest. From Tharon's saddle Billy hadtaken the flask of water, the tightly rolled bundle of bread and meatin its meal-sack. They ate sparingly of this, drank more sparingly ofthe water. Billy wondered miserably how soon this last might becomemore precious than fine gold to him, as he thought of the waterlesspockets of the blind and sliding country. 

Long before she had rested sufficiently Tharon was up and ready to go. Ever her eager eyes were on the heights above. Ever they turned to theleft of the steady line she set herself through and above the windingpasses. From time to time Billy looked back. There was not a sign bywhich one might tell which way he had come if the last mark he madewas around the first corner. Hundreds and thousands of spires andfaces towered about them. It was a mystic maze of dead stone, cut andweathered by the elements. 

"No wonder!" he told himself, "that the Indians call it the EnchantedLand!"

"We'll reach False Ridge tomorrow, Billy, " Tharon told him confidently, "an' over it lies God's Cup. There's water there--an' Kenset. "

"What makes you think so?"

"I don't know. Just feel. He's there--alive or--" a half sob clutchedat her voice--"or dead. But he's there. "

"There'll be some one with him if he's alive, most likely. "

"Sure, " said Tharon briefly. 

All the afternoon they traveled, sometimes touching with outstretchedhands the faces on either side of them, again walking upward throughmajestic halls, solemn and beautiful. Everything about them wasbeautiful, the height, the sheer, straight walls, the myriad littleblue shadows of tiny projections on their faces. Night came so earlyin the pits that long before they wished they were compelled to camp. In a blind pocket, walled like a room and round as an apple, theystopped, and Billy spread down the blanket he had taken fromDrumfire's back. This was their only preparation. They had nothing todo, no fire to build, no water to bring. 

Tharon, scarcely conscious of the many miles she had traveled sincethe previous night, sat down upon the blanket, gathered her knees inher arms and stared at the vague blue phantoms of cliffs through thetall straight mouth that led into this sheltered pocket. 

Outside the winds were drawing up the cañons. All day they had walkedin this wind. It drew constantly up and down the cuts, this way andthat, like contrary currents that met and fought each other, swung intogether, went a little way in peace, to again split and surge awaythrough other channels. The echoes were alive with every sound, bothof their own making and that of the wind's. A constant sighing dronedthrough the depths, a mournful, whispering sound that sent the shiversdown Tharon's spine, made her think sadly of all the tragedies she hadever known. 

Billy, lying full length beside her, his hands beneath his head, looked up to the narrow blue spot of sky so far away, and thought hisown thoughts, and they were not wholly sad. 

They fell to talking, softly, in low tones, as if in all themysterious solitude there might be one to hear, and it was mostlyspeech of long ago--when Billy had first come into Lost Valley. 

After a long and quiet hour the man insisted that she shouldsleep--that after the hard day and in view of the coming hard morrow, she needed rest. 

"But I'm not tired, Billy, " Tharon protested, "no more'n as if I'dbeen ridin' all day after th' cattle. "

But Billy shook his head and hollowed a little place in the soft slidestuff at the Wall's foot. In this he spread the blanket, folding ithalf back. 

"Lie down, " he commanded, "an' you'll be asleep so quick you won'tknow when it happens. "

Tharon slipped off her daddy's belt and stretched her slim young formin the hollow, which fitted it like a cradle. Not for nothing hadBilly slept out many a night with nothing save the earth and stars forbed and blanket. The hollow was craftily deepened at hip and shoulder, making a restful couch. As she settled herself therein he lapped theloose half of the blanket over her and tucked it in. Then he took hishat, folded it sharply and placed it under the tawny head. 

In its place he would fain have laid his heart. 

His fingers, settling the improvised pillow, tangled themselveswistfully in the sun-bright hair, and the boy groaned aloud. 

"What's the matter, Billy, dear?" asked Tharon anxiously, but Billylaughed lightly, a thin sound in the mighty caverns. 

"Nothing in God's world, Tharon, " he lied. "Now go to sleep. "

And he walked away to the tall mouth and sat down with his backagainst one of the walls. From his pocket he took papers and tobaccoand proceeded to roll himself a cigarette. . . . Dawn showed the narrowdoorway strewn with their butts, as leaves strew mountain trails inautumn. 

 * * * * *

Things were ready to happen in Lost Valley--several things. 

At the Golden Cloud, Lola looked across the level stretches toward theStronghold with tragic dark eyes, and smiled at a dozen men whom shescarcely saw. Settlers from all up and down the Wall drifted intoCorvan and out again, intent, silent, watchful. _Vaqueros_ and ridersfrom the Stronghold also came and went, as intent, as silent. Theypassed each other with hostile eyes and trigger fingers were unusuallylimber. The air was pregnant with change. 

Buck Courtrey was conspicuous by his absence. 

He was not seen in the town, neither was he at the Stronghold. 

There were soft whispers afloat that he was with the Pomos up underthe Rockface at the north. 

And at the Stronghold, poor Ellen, whiter than ever, more like abroken lily drooping on its stem, trembled and waited for a day thatwas set soon--too terribly soon!--the day, farcically appointed, forthe suit for divorce against her. 

Word of this was abroad through all the Valley. Undergroundspeculation was rife as to which of the two women whom Courtreyfavoured, Lola or Tharon, was responsible. Some said one, some theother. But Lola knew. 

Then came the day itself--a golden summer day as sweet and bright asthat one years ago when Courtrey had married Ellen--at this same pinebuilding where the laughable legal farces were enacted now. 

Pale as a new moon Ellen rode in across the rolling stretches on oneof the Ironwoods, with Cleve beside her. She was spiritless, silent. Cleve was silent, too, though for a far different reason. There was afrown between his brows, a glitter in his narrowed eyes. He wasthinking of the only man in Corvan whom he had been able to persuadeto present Ellen's protest--Dick Burtree, one-time lawyer and man ofparts in the outside, now a puffed and threadbare vagabond, whoseparamount idea was whiskey and more whiskey. But Burtree could talk. Over his mottled and shapeless lips could, on occasion, pour a streamof pure oratory silver as the Vestal's Veil. 

When he was drunk he feared neither man nor devil, and he could speakbest so. Therefore Cleve had given him enough money in advance to puthim in trim. 

"What you think Buck'll say about me, Cleve?" Ellen asked anxiously. "What's he mean to accuse me of?"

"Any dirty thing he can trump up, Sis, " said Cleve gravely, "he'sa-goin' to make it a nasty mess--an' I wish to God you'd jest ride ondown th' Wall with me an' never even look back. "

He leaned from his saddle and took the blue-veined hand in his. Therewas an unspeakable tenderness in his eyes as he regarded his sister. "What you say, Ellen? There's life below, an' work an' other men. You'll marry again, sometime----"

But Ellen shook her head with its maize-gold crown. 

"Nary other man, Cleve, " she said gently. "I'm all Buck's woman. "

So they rode on toward the town, and Cleve knew that his last fainthope was dead. 

In the town itself there was a stir. Courtrey was there, and WylackieBob, and Black Bart and Arizona, a bunch of dark, evil men in allsurety. 

The Ironwoods were in evidence everywhere, but strange to say, therewere no Finger Marks. Not a man from the Holding was in town. 

When Cleve and Ellen, alone together, rode in, it lacked yet a halfhour of the time set for trial. There was no place to go but Baston's, so they dismounted at the hitch-rack. Ellen, swaying on her feet, looked all around with her big pale eyes, and when she saw Courtreysome distance away she put a hand to her heart as simply as a hurtchild. She was a pitiful creature in her long white dress, for shehad ridden in on an old sidesaddle, and she shook out the crumpledfolds in a wistful attempt to look proper. On her head was theinevitable sunbonnet of slats and calico. 

As she went up the steps of the store with Cleve, Lola of the GoldenCloud, blazing like a comet in her red-and-black came face to facewith her purposely. What was in Lola's head none would ever know, butshe wanted to see Courtrey's wife. 

As they met they stopped dead still, these two women who loved oneman, and the look that passed between them was electric, deep, revealing. They stood so long staring into each other's eyes thatCleve, frowning, plucked Ellen by the sleeve and made to pushforward. 

But as suddenly as a flash of light Lola reached out her two hands andcaught Ellen's in a tight clasp that only women know, the swift, clinging clasp of the secret fellowship of those who suffer. 

For one tense moment she held them, while Ellen swayed forward for allthe world as if she would sink in upon the deep full breast of thiswanton whom she had hated! Then the spell broke, they fell apart witha rush, Lola swung out and went down the steps, while Ellen obedientlyfollowed Cleve into Baston's store, where she sat on a nail keg andwaited in a dull lethargy. Outside Courtrey, who had witnessed thething from across the street, slapped his thigh and laugheduproariously. 

It was a funny sight to him. But Lola's beautiful black eyes blazedacross at him with a light that none had ever seen before in theirinscrutable depths. 

Then the hour struck, and all Corvan, it seemed to Cleve, strung outtoward the Court House. This was to be in open court--a spectacle. From somewhere in the adobe outskirts of the town came Ellen's servingwomen, most of them, whom Cleve had sent in early in the day. Theyfell in with her and so, with only the brother who had never failedher and these dusky women of the silent tongues to back her, EllenCourtrey went to her crucifixion as truly as though she had been oneof the two thieves on Golgotha. 

At the sight of Courtrey across the big bare room she went whiter thanshe was, if such a thing were possible, and slid weakly into the chairplaced for her. 

Then the thing proceeded--swiftly, lightly, with smiles on the facesof the crowd. 

Old Ben Garland on the judge's bench, was furtive, scared, nervous, fiddling with his papers and clearing his throat from time to time. 

The county clerk at his table made a great deal out of the ceremonyof swearing in the witnesses--Wylackie Bob, Black Bart, Arizona andone young Wylackie Indian woman who worked at the Stronghold. Cleveput up only the serving women whom he had sent in, some seven of them, every one of whom loved their mistress with the faithful fidelity of adog. These women knew Ellen Courtrey as not even the master of theStronghold himself knew her. They knew her in her idle hours, at hersmall tasks, at her bedside, in the loving solicitude she displayedfor all of them--and they knew her on her knees in prayer, for Ellenhad a strange and simple religion, half Catholic and half Pomopaganism. 

In the straight-backed chair they gave her Ellen sat like a statue, sweet and still, a thing so obviously good that it seemed evenCourtrey himself must weaken to behold her. But not Courtrey. He wason fire with the vision of Tharon Last on the Cup Rim's floor, shakingher fist toward him in challenge--at Baston's steps calling him amurderer and worse--at her western door, striking him from her withthe strength of a man. He saw the signal fire flaring across thedarkened Valley--and nothing on earth or in Heaven could have softenedhim to the woman who bound him away from this fighting girl, this gunwoman whom he was breaking to him slowly but surely. He visioned herin Ellen's room at the Stronghold--and the breath came fast in histhroat. 

And Ellen?

Ah, Ellen was thinking of the long past day when this man had foundher in the barren rocklands and taken her with the high hand of alover. She, too, drifted away from the chilling courtroom with itsjudge and its petty officials. . . . And then all suddenly she knew thatmen were talking--and about her. She heard the drone of question andanswer--the rambling statements of the stranger, Arizona, accusing herof strange things--of asking him to take her on rides in Courtrey'sabsence--of swinging with him nights in the hammock by the wateringtrough!

She sat and listened with parted lips and large innocent eyes fixed onthe man in wonder. Cleve Whitmore clenched his hands until the nailscut deep, but he held his tongue and controlled his face. Only theblazing blue eyes spoke. She knew that Black Bart tried to tellsomething, that he made some mistake or other and had to begin allover again. There was a long and tedious time in here when she lookedaway out the window to where the prairie grass was blowing in thelittle winds and the shadows of clouds drifted across the greenexpanse. . . . She was numb and far away with misery. She did not carefor anything in all this world. It seemed as if she was detached, aloof, dead already in body as she was in soul. . . . And then she heardthe drawling voice of Wylackie Bob--and he was saying somethingunspeakable--about her! She listened like one in a trance--then shestruggled up from her chair with tragic long arms extended, and thecry that rang from her lips was piteous. 

"Buck!" it pealed across the stillness of the crowded room, "Buck!--itain't so! Never in this world, Buck! I ben true to you as your shadow!Before God, it ain't true!"

There was a stir throughout the crowd, a breath that was audible. There were many of the Vigilantes there--a goodly number, allwondering where Tharon Last was, where Kenset was, where werethe riders from Last's. They had expected, what they did notknow--something, at any rate, for this seemed somehow a test, aturning point. But there was nothing. They stirred and waited, like a great force heaving in its bed, blind, sluggish, butwakening. 

And Ellen, chilled by Courtrey's sneering face, the cold disapprovalof Ben Garland's striking mallet, sank back in her chair and coveredher face with her shaking hands. . . . She heard some more awfulthings--then the voice of Dick Burtree beginning soft, low, silverlike running waters. She heard it tell of that far away day of hermarriage--of the years that followed--of Courtrey's love for her--ofher own gentleness, her beauty, "like the tender sunlight of spring onthe snow and the golden sands"--of her service, her loyalty, her lovethat had "never faltered nor intruded" that "patient obedience to hermaster had but strengthened and made perfect. " Of the pitiful thingthat her life had been this man made a wondrous thing, all sweet withtwilights and haloed with service. 

He talked until the courtroom was still as death and the Indian womenbehind her were rocking in unison of grief. Then she heard questionsagain and the gutteral soft voices of her women answering--with loveand devotion in every halting word. Once again the crowd in the roomstirred--and Courtrey's narrow eyes went over it in that cold, promising glance. 

For once in his life Courtrey, the bully, felt a premonitory chilldown his spine--because for the first time that promising glance ofhis failed of its effect! Only here and there along the rows of facesdid one cower. There were faces, many faces, that looked back at himwith steady eyes and tight lips. . . . Verily it was time he conqueredthe riding, shooting, beautiful she-devil who had made this thingpossible! The sooner he got Tharon Last away from this bunch of spawnthe better. Then he would sweep in with all his old swift methods, only sharper ones this time, and "clean" them all. When he got throughit would be a different man's Valley, make no mistake about that!

Here Ellen looked straight into his eyes and both were conscious ofthe shock. Ellen wilted and Courtrey frowned and struck a fist againstthe railing near him. . . . He looked up and met the hesitating eyes ofBen Garland on the bench and his own hardened down to pin points. 

The farce was finished save for the Judge's decision--Dick Burtree wasslumped in his chair, dead drunk and asleep. Wylackie Bob was lightinga cigarette in his brown fingers, a smile on his evil mouth, his slow, black eyes covering the slim white form of Ellen in a speculative way, as if he dreamed of making true his blasphemous lies. Ellen was sweetas a flower in her open-lipped beauty, her panting despair. Wylackiedid not notice the slim man beside her whose lips were so tight thatthey were a mere line across his face. No one at the Strongholdnoticed Cleve much. 

Then Ben Garland was speaking, and Ellen gathered her dim wits enoughto make out that he was saying strange things--awful things--that hadto do with Courtrey's freedom. 

Then she knew--swaying and groping with her blue-veined hands--thatthe thing was done--that she was no longer a wife. That she wouldnever again sleep in the bend of Courtrey's arm as she had slept inthose golden days of long ago--that she was an outcast, blackenedbeyond all hope by the damning and unchoice words of Wylackie Bob. . . . Then the world faded out for Ellen in merciful blackness. 

The petty officials rose with laughter and clanking of boots on theboard floors--the crowd filed out in a striking silence. Never beforehad a crowd in Lost Valley gone out from a courtroom in that strangeand bodeful silence. 

The sight of Ellen lying white and limp across Cleve Whitmore'sshoulder like a sack of grain, as he passed out with the moving mass, had an odd effect. It was partly the white dress that did it--and thetime was ripe. 

Courtrey and his gang were toward the fore--first out. They spread offto one side with jest and quip, with flash of bottle and slap onshoulder. The populace thinned a bit from the steps. . . . And thensuddenly as a pistol shot Cleve Whitmore's voice rang out like aclarion. 

"Wylackie!" it pealed across the subdued noises, "You ---- ---- ----hell hound. _Turn round!_"

There was death in it. 

The gun man whirled, drawing like lightning. In the Court House door, Cleve Whitmore with his sister's limp form on his shoulder, beat himto it. 

He had drawn as he called. Before the words were off his lips hepulled the trigger and shot Wylackie through the heart. 

As his henchman fell Courtrey's good hand flashed to his hip, butDixon of the Vigilantes, shot out an arm and knocked him forward frombehind. 

For the second time Courtrey had missed a life because a brave heartdared him. Old Pete had paid the price for that trick. Dixon had nothought of it. 

And in one moment the chance was past, for a sound began to roar fromthat silent crowd which had poured from the courtroom--the deep, bloodcurdling sound of the mob forming, inarticulate, uncertain. 

For the first time in his life Courtrey felt real fear grip him. 

He had killed and stolen and wronged among these people and gottenaway with it. He had never feared them. They had been silent. Now withthe first deep rumble from the concrete throat of Lost Valley he gothis first instinctive thrill of disaster. 

He stood for a moment in utter silence. Then he flung up his hands, snapped out an order, whirled on his heel and went swiftly to the nearrack where stood Bolt and the rest of the Ironwoods. Like a set ofpuppets on strings his men drew after him--and they left Wylackie Bobwhere he fell. 

In a matter of seconds the whole Stronghold gang was mounted andclattering down the street--out of the town toward the open range. 

 * * * * *

And the killer on the Court House steps?

He stood where he was and looked with blazing eyes over the motleycrowd beneath him. Steptoe Service made a step toward him, lookedround, wet his lips and thought better of it. 

 * * * * *

And then, in another second, the crowd was a mob and the mob was theVigilantes. Some one took Ellen from Cleve's shoulder with carefulhands and carried her away. Then some one reached down and picked himup bodily. Another joined, and they set him on their shoulders, lifting him high. The inarticulate mob cry swelled and deepened androse to a different sound--a shout that gathered volume and roared outacross the spaces where Courtrey rode with a menace, a portent. 

With one accord the mob started on a journey around Corvan. 

White as Ellen, Cleve Whitmore rode that triumphant journey, his eyesstill blazing, his lips tight. The town went wild. Public feeling cameout on every hand. Daring took the weak, hope took the oppressed, andthey called Courtrey's reign right there. For three uproarious hoursthe bar-tenders could not wipe off their bars. 

A new regime was ushered in--and she who had been its sponsor was notthere to see it. 

 * * * * *

When the hour of Change was striking for Corvan and all Lost Valley, Tharon Last, who had set it to strike, was scaling False Ridge in theCañon Country. Grim, ash-pale with effort, her blue eyes shining, sheclimbed the Secret Way that few had ever found. 

How she had come to it through the tortuous cuts and passes was amarvel of homing instinct--the heart that homed to its object. It hadseemed to her all along this strange, tense journey, that she had hadno will of her own, that she had held her breath and shut her eyes, asit were, and gone forward in obedience to some strange thing withinthat said, "turn here, " "go thus. " Billy following behind, watched herwith tight lips and a secret wonder. As she had told him she would"go straight, Mary willing, " so she had gone straight--and it seemed, truly, as if it were right that she should, no matter how his heartached to see this thing. 

Verily there was something supernatural about it all, somethinguncanny. 

If it had been he, Billy, whom Tharon loved, and had he lain, woundedin the Cup o' God, would the girl have been given this blind instinctfor direction? Would she have gone as unerringly to the Secret Way?

Nay--there must be something in the old saying that, for every heartin the world there was its true mate. 

Tharon had found hers in Kenset. 

But where would he ever find his? The boy shook his fair headhopelessly at the sliding floors. For all perfection there must besacrifice. He was the sacrifice for Tharon's perfection--a willingone, so help him!

That they had found the Secret Way across False Ridge was perfectlyplain, for here in the living rock before them were marks, the firstmarks they had found in the Cañons. Thin, small crosses, cut in thestone of the walls, began to lead upward from the last liftings cutstraight up the Rockface of False Ridge itself. It seemed, to look atthe dim traces, that no living thing without wings could scale thatsteep and forbidding cliff, but when they tried to climb, they foundthat each step had been set with artful cunning. The set of stepsfollowed the form of a "switchback, " working from right to left, andalways rising a little. False Ridge itself, a towering, mighty spine, came down in a swiftly dropping ridge from somewhere in the high uppercountry at the west of all the cañons. It was known to leaddeceptively down among the cuts and passes, as if it went straightdown to the lower levels, and to end abruptly in a precipice that nonecould descend or climb. On all its rugged sides there were treacherousslopes which looked hard enough to support a man, but which, oncestepped on, gave sickeningly away to slide and slither for a hundredfeet straight down to some abrupt edge, where they fell in dustycataracts to blind basins and walled cups below. 

In these blind cups were many skeletons of deer and other animals thathad ventured down from the upper world, never to return. Somewhere uphere must be the bones of Cañon Jim. 

But the Secret Way was safe. Under every carefully worked out stepthere was solid stone, for every handhold there was a firm stake set. These stakes were old for the most part, but here and there had beenset in a new one--Courtrey's work, they made no doubt, for Courtreywas said to know the Cañons. It took Tharon and Billy two hours tomake the climb, stopping from time to time to rest. At such times theboy stood close and took her hand. It was grim work looking down thesheer face, and one might well be excused for holding a hand forsteadiness. And it would soon be the time for no more touches of thisgirl's fair self for Billy. 

And so, climbing steadily and in comparative silence, these two, whosehearts were strong, came at last to the top of False Ridge--a thinknife-blade of stone--and looked abruptly and suddenly down on theother side. 

With a little gasp Tharon put a hand to her throat, for there, anunbelievably short distance down, lay the Cup o' God, without a doubt. A small, round glade of living green, watered by a whispering streamthat lost itself the Lord knew where, it lay like a tiny gem in thepink stone setting. Trees stood in utter quiet about its edges, forthere was here no slightest breath of air. Lush grass carpeted itslevel floor. And there, almost directly under the marked way leadingdown, lay a tiny camp--the ashes of a dead fire, a gun against a tree, and--here Tharon leaned far out and looked as if her very spirit wouldpenetrate the distance--a blanket spread on the level earth, on whichthere lay the body of a man!

It was a trim body, they could see from where they stood, clad in darkgarments of olive drab that hugged the lean limbs close. 

"Kenset!" whispered Tharon with paling lips. "Kenset of th'foothills, --an'--he--looks, " she wet those ashy lips, "he--looks likehe is dead. "

Without another word she set her feet in the precarious way and wentdown so fast that Billy's heart rose in his throat and choked him, andfor the first time since he could remember, he called fervently uponhis Maker with honest reverence. He thought at every slip and scramblethat she must fall and go hurtling down the Rockface. 

But that uncanny instinct which had brought her this far was at hercommand still. She went down faster than it seemed possible foranything to go, and before the rider was able to catch up she hadleaped to the grassy floor, and was running forward toward that stillform on the blanket. 

"Kenset!" she cried like a bugle, "Kenset! Kenset! Oh, --David!"

And then it was that the quiet form stirred, rolled over on its side, lifted itself on an elbow--and held out two arms that waveredgrotesquely, but were eloquent of love's power and its need. 

And the Mistress of Last's flung herself on her knees, gathered upthis strange man as if he had been a child, pressed him hard againsther breast, and kissed him as we kiss our dead. She pushed his facefrom her and looked into it as if she would see his very soul, thetears running on her white cheeks, her lips working soundlessly. 

This was love! This agony--this ecstasy--this sublime forgetting ofall the world beside--this reward after struggle. 

Billy stood for a second at the foot of the Wall, and the nails cut inhis palms. Then he whirled and went fast as he could walk toward thefirst trees that presented themselves--and he could not see where hewas going for the bleak grey mist that swam in his eyes. 

This was love! This dreary colour of the golden sunlight of noon inthe high country--this dumb ache that locked his throat--this highcourage that brought him serving love's object to the bitter-sweetend. How long he stood there he did not know. His heart was dead, likethe weathered stone country about him. He knew that he heard Tharon'svoice after a while, that golden voice which had been the bells ofLast's, in rapid question and answer--and Kenset's voice, too, weakand slow, but filled with joy unspeakable. It was lilting and soft, alover's voice, a victor's voice, and presently he caught a few of thebroken words that passed between them--"Clean! Clean! Oh, Tharon, darling--there is no blood on these dear hands! Tell me you did notkill Courtrey!"

He heard Tharon answer in the negative. 

And then all the world fell about him, it seemed, for a gun crackedfrom the trees beyond him and a wasp stung his cheek. 

In one instant the sunlight became brilliant again, the joy came backin the day. Here was something more to do for Tharon, a new task athand when he had thought his tasks were all but done. 

He whirled, looked, drew his six-gun and began firing at the man whostood in plain sight just where he had stepped into the Cup from themouth of a little blind cut where the stream went out in noise andlost itself. 

This was a big man, sinister and cold and dark, a half-breed Pomo ofCourtrey's gang, a still-hunter who did a lot of the dirty work whichthe others refused. Billy had seen him before, knew his record. 

Now they two stood face to face and fired at each other swiftly, coolly. He saw the half-breed stagger once, knew that he had touchedhim somewhere. And then a sound cut into the snapping of the shots, asound that was like nothing he had ever heard in all his life before, a sound as savage as the roar of a she-bear whose cub is killed beforeher eyes. As he flung away his empty gun and snatched the other, hemoved enough to bring into his range of vision Tharon Last, standingover Kenset, her mouth open in that savage cry. 

Then before he could draw and fire again he saw the prettiest piece ofwork he had ever witnessed. He saw the gun woman crouch and stoop, sawher hands flash in Jim Last's famous backhand flip, saw the red flamespurt from her hips, and the Pomo half-breed flung up his hands andfell in a heap, his face in the grass. He did not move. Only a longripple passed over his body. He was still as the ageless rocks, asmuch a part of eternity. For a moment Billy stood, the gun hanging inhis hand. Then he knew that Tharon was coming toward him--that herhands were on his shoulders--her deep eyes piercing his with a lookthat meant more to him than all the earth beside. It was the fierce, mother-look of changeless affection, the companion to that savage cry. She held him in a pinching grip, and made sure that he was unhurt, save for that scratch on the cheek. 

"If he had killed you, Billy, " she said tensely, "I'd a-gone a-muckan' shot up th' whole of Lost Valley. "

And the boy knew in his heart she spoke the solemn truth. 

He slipped his hands down her arms and caught her fingers tightly. 

"Stained!" his heart whispered to itself in stifling exhilaration, "inspite of all--her first killin'--an' for me!"

Then he could bear her face no more, and turned to look at Kenset. Half off the edge of his blanket the forest man lay with his faceburied in his hands, and beside him lay another gun, the smoke stillcurling from its muzzle. 

"By God!" said the rider, softly, "what's this?" and he ran forward topick up the weapon. 

"Three of us!" he said aloud, "pepperin' him at once! Kenset, wheredid you get this gun?"

But Kenset did not speak. His shoulders trembled, his dark head wasbowed to the earth. 

"Answer me, " said Billy, "for as sure's I live, this here's BuckCourtrey's favourite gun--the gun with the untrue firin' pin. Lookhere. " And he held it toward Tharon who leaned near to look. Trueenough. 

In the right side of the plunger there was a small, shining nick, asif, at some previous time, a tiny chink had been broken out of it. 

"I found it where I saw Courtrey hide it that night they brought mehere, " said Kenset in a muffled voice. "I crawled when the Pomo wasout in the Cañons after meat. "

"An' you used it--at last. I see. Not till th' last. "

"No, " said Kenset miserably, "not till the last. "

Slowly Tharon knelt down beside him and put a tender arm across hisshoulders. Her face was shining--like Billy's heart. 

"Mr. Kenset, " she said softly, "I told you once that I was afraid youwas soft--like a woman--that you wouldn't shoot if you had a gun. An'you said, 'You're right. I wouldn't. Not until th' last extremity. '

"What was this last extremity? Tell me. Why did you shoot when youknew right well I'd get him myself?"

"To beat you to it!" cried the man with sudden passion, "to take thestain myself!"

For a long moment the girl knelt there beside him and gazed unseeinglyat the inscrutable calm of the silent country. Something in the depthsof her blue eyes was changing--deepening, growing in subtle beauty, asif the universe was suddenly become perfect, as if there was nowhere aflaw. 

"There's only one kind of man, after all, Mr. Kenset, " she said atlast with a sweet dignity, "th' man who is true an' honest to th'best there is in him, accordin' to his lights. That's my kind ofman. "

 * * * * *

Then she rose, and it was as if a light of activity burned up in her. She became practical on the instant. 

"I'm glad you brought th' thin rope, Billy, " she said, "it's longer'nmine. An' th' little axe, too. We'll need 'em all to get him up an'down False Ridge. An' we must get busy right pronto. Th' Pomo killerwe'll leave where he is. The Cañon Country will make him a silentgrave. "

CHAPTER XI

FINGER MARK AND IRONWOOD AT LAST

It was another noon in Lost Valley. The summer sun sailed the azureskies in majesty. Little soft winds from the south wimpled the grassof the rolling ranges, shook all the leaves of the poplars. Down theface of the Wall the Vestal's Veil shimmered and shone like a millionmiles of lace. 

At Corvan wild excitement ruled. Swift things had come upon them, things that staggered the tight-lipped community, even though it wasused to speed and tragedy. For one thing, Ellen, pale, sweet flower, had hanged herself in the gaudy apartment of Lola behind the GoldenCloud where the dance-hall woman had peremptorily brought her whenthey took her off Cleve Whitmore's shoulder. She left a little notefor Courtrey, a pathetic short scrawl, which simply reiterated thatshe had "ben true to him as his shadow, " and that if he did no longerwant her, she did not want herself. 

At that pitiful end to a guiltless life, Lola, who knew innocence andsin, sat down on the only carpeted floor in Corvan and wept. When shefinished, she was done with Corvan and Lost Valley, ready to move onas she had moved through an eventful life. 

For another thing, two strange men had ridden up the Wall from theBottle Neck a few days back, and they had put through some mysteriousdoings. 

This day at noon these two strangers were riding down on Corvan fromup the Pomo way, while from the Stronghold, Buck Courtrey's men werethundering in with the cattle king at their head. He was grim andsilent, black with gathering rage. His news-veins tapped the Valley, he knew a deal that others tried to hide, and he was coming in toreach a savage hand once more toward that supremacy which he knew fullwell to be slipping from him. 

And from the blind mouth in the Rockface at the west where the roofedcut led to the mystery and the grandeur of the Cañon Country, astrange procession came slowly out to crawl across the greenexpanse--a woman on a silver horse, a rider on a red roan who satbehind the saddle and bore in his arms a man whose heavy head lolledupon his shoulder in all but mortal weakness. 

Thus Fate, who had for so long played with life and death in LostValley, tiring of the play, drew in the strings of the puppets and setthe stage for the last act. 

As Tharon and Billy crept up to Baston's store and stopped at thesteps, a dozen eager men leaped forward to their help. 

"Easy!" warned the girl. "He's ben hurt a long time, an' he's had anawful trip. There's fever in him, an' th' wound in his shoulder openeda bit with th' haulin'. Lay him down on th' porch a while to rest. "

But Kenset opened his dark eyes with the old quiet smile and looked ather. 

"I'm worth a dozen dead men yet, Miss Last, " he said. 

As he lay, a trim, long figure in his semi-military garments, on theedge of the porch, the populace of Corvan streamed in from theoutskirts and gathered in the open street. Whispers and comments wererife among them, a new courage was noticeable everywhere. TheVigilantes were present, many of them. 

Question and answer passed swiftly and quietly back and forth betweenDixon, Jameson, Hill and Tharon. In a few pregnant moments she knewwhat had happened in Corvan--they knew the secret of False Ridge andthe Cup o' God. 

"An' now these strangers from below--they ben a-actin' awful queer, ain't a-feared o' nothin' an' they ben goin' all over like a couple o'hounds. One of 'em's got on a badge of some sort, " said Jameson, "didn't mean t' show it, I allow, but Hill, here, seen it bychanct----"

Kenset raised himself quickly on an elbow. 

"By all that's lucky!" he said softly, excitedly. "Burn-Harris andO'Hallan! My Secret Service men!"

 * * * * *

And it was even so, for by the end of another hour the two strangerscame riding in and were brought forward to the steps where Kenset lay, to clasp his hand and greet him with all the pleasure of previousacquaintance. 

Then they requested that a space be cleared to the end of ear-shot andtogether with Kenset, Tharon, Billy, and all the Vigilantes, they helda long and earnest colloquy. 

At its end Kenset's eyes were deep and troubled, but Tharon's werebeginning to glow with the old fire that all the Holding knew, theleaping flame that rose and died and rose again, exciting to thebeholder, promising, threatening, unfathomable. 

"Why, it's a cinch!" said O'Hallan, "a dead moral cinch! Don't see howit's held on like it has. Couldn't have in any other place in the goodold U. S. A. But this God forsaken hole! Well named, Lost Valley!Why, we've found enough evidence already to convict a dozen men! YourCourtrey's the man that planned a dozen murders, I can see that, andhe's pulled off a lot of them himself. The people are talking now, rumbling from one end of the Valley to the other. We've had to hold upour hands to ward them off lately. Your Vigilantes here have opened upsince we got them together and showed some of them your letter. Youwere wise to tell us to go ahead if you were not here--what did youlook for?"

"Just about what I got, " said Kenset smiling, "and I wanted things tobe pushed through anyway. "

"Well, --they're pushing, " said Burn-Harris. "Your little old sheriffhas had the fear-of-the-Lord put into him somewhat. He's shaking inhis boots about the snow-packer. There's only one thing lacking tomake our grip close down on Courtrey, and that's vital--the gun withthe untrue firing pin you speak about in your instructions. "

"Not lackin', " said Tharon grimly, "we've got it, Mister. "

The Secret Service man whirled to her. 

"You have?" he cried, "then show me your man!"

But Tharon stood for a long moment looking off across the rollinggreen stretches, toward the north where a moving dot was drawingdown--the riders from the Stronghold. 

"This, " she said at last, tapping the gun which Billy handed over, "this, then, is proof--is proof in law?"

"If it's the true gun that fits the shell which Mr. Kenset left for ushere at Baston's--yes. "

"Then, " said Burn-Harris, "a little time and your man's ours as sure'sthe sun shines. Why, this is a hot-bed of crime--there's enough workhere to keep a whole force busy for months. "

But Tharon Last did not heed his words. Her mind had leaped away fromthe present back to that day in spring when Jim Last came home to die. She heard again his last command, "Th' best gun woman in Lost Valley, "heard her own voice promising to his dulling ears, "I'll get him, sohelp me, God!"

And this was the end. Strangers were waiting to fulfill that promise, to take her work out of her hands. She absently watched the moving dottake form and sharply string out into a line of riding men. Thesestrangers with their hidden signs of authority would bring to his justdesserts Buck Courtrey, the man who had instigated the killing of poorHarkness, who had personally shot her daddy in the back! For them, then, she had made her crosses of promise in the granite under thepointing pine. 

They who had no right in Lost Valley would settle its blood scores, would pay her debts!

She frowned and the fingers of her right hand fiddled at the gun-buttat her hip. 

For what had she striven all these many months? For what had sheperfected herself in Jim Last's art?

A little white line drew in about her lips, the flame in her blue eyesleaped and flickered. The tawny brows gathered into a puckered frown. 

Billy, watching, moved restlessly on his booted feet. He it was whosaw--who feared. He touched her wrist with timid fingers and sheflashed him a swift glance that half melted to a smile. Then sheforgot him and all the rest--for the Ironwoods were thundering in fromthe outside levels, were coming into town. 

Ahead rode Courtrey, big, black, keen, his wide hat swept back on hisiron-grey hair, an imposing presence. 

"Here's your man!" said Kenset softly, rising excitedly on his elbow. "He's coming! And God grant that there is no bloodshed!"

All of Corvan, so long meek and quiet under Courtrey's foot, moveddramatically back to give him room to come thundering down to hisaccounting. 

In a few seconds he would be encompassed by his enemies. 

And then, on the tick of fate, that universally unknown factor, awoman's heart, flung its last pawn in the balance. 

Lola, gleaming like a bird of paradise in her gay habiliments, leaningforward from the further steps of Baston's store where she had slippedup unnoticed, cupped her white hands to her scarlet mouth, and sentout a cry like a clarion. 

"Buck!" she called, bell-like, clear, far-reaching--"Buck! Turn back!They've called your turn! It's all up for you! Go! Go--down--the Wall!And--God bless you--Buck! Good-bye!"

For one awful moment the great red Ironwood, Bolt, flung up his headand slid forward on his haunches, ploughing up the earth in a cloud. 

Then, while the half-stunned crowd gaped in silence, he gatheredhimself, straightened, whirled, shook his giant frame and leaped clearof the ground in a spectacular turn. The man on his back snatched offhis hat and shook it defiantly at the town--the people--the veryValley that he had ruled so long. It was a dramatic gesture--daring, scorning, renouncing. Then, without a word to his henchmen, a singlelook of farewell, Buck Courtrey struck the Ironwood, and was gone backalong the little street. 

His men whirled after him, but strange turn of destiny, they swungdirectly north away from him, for he was turning south at the town'sedge. 

"For the--Wall!" breathed Lola, her face like milk, one hand on herglittering breast. "He--goes--for below!"

Then all the watchers knew the same. 

The master of the Stronghold, having played for Lost Valley and for awoman and lost them both--was done with both. 

He leaned on the Ironwood's mighty neck and went south toward theBottle Neck. 

All eyes were upon him--all, that is, save the earnest grey ones ofBilly Brent. They were fixed in anguish on the face of Tharon Lastbeside him--Tharon Last, who shoved the gun-butts hard down in theholsters at her hips, who whirled on her booted heel, who cleared thespace between her and El Rey in three cat-like leaps. 

As she went up the stallion rose with her, came down with a poundingof iron-shod hoofs, dropped his huge hips in the first leap--and wasaway. 

Corvan saw the silver horse shoot out from its midst and woke from itslethargy. 

"_Th' race!_" some one cried, high and shrill, "_th' race at last!_"

The two strangers saw it, and their lips fell open with amaze. 

Kenset from his low porch saw it--and dropped his face on his arms. 

"Lord God!" he groaned, "it's come! I couldn't hold her! I might haveknown! I might have known! She's Valley bred--she _is_ the Valley!I--and all I stand for--chaff in the wind! Nothing could hold her now!Aye--nothing could hold her. "

True at last to herself--true to Harkness--true to Jim Last--true tothe Vigilantes and to the Valley she loved, Tharon flung the sombrerofrom her bright head, settled her feet in the stirrups, slid the reinon El Rey's neck, leaned down above him and began to call in hisears. 

No need of that cry. 

El Rey heeded nothing that she might say. She was not his master--neverhad been. He had had but one, the big, stern man whose sharp wordhad been his law--the one who had ever had his best, his love and hisspeed. 

What was it now that rode in his saddle--the saddle with the long darkstain?

Assuredly it was not the slim girl-thing with the golden voice!

El Rey had ever looked through, beyond her. 

Nay, it was something bigger, stronger, sterner--who shall say?Perhaps the spirit of that master whom he had served, whom he hadbrought faithfully home that night in spring, for whom he had lookedand listened all these weary months! There was something, indeed--forEl Rey, the great, lay down to earth and ran without the need ofguidance. He set the long red horse out there on the green plainbefore him like a beacon and put the mighty machinery of his massivebody into motion. Bolt was a rival worthy of his best--Bolt, the kingof the Ironwoods, huge, spirited, fast as the wind and wild as fire. El Rey's silver ears lay back along his neck, the mane above them waslike a cloud, his long tail streamed behind him like a comet--andforgotten was his singlefooting. He ran, his great limbs gathering andspreading beneath him--gathering and spreading--with the regularity, of clock-work. 

Tharon's blue eyes were narrow as her father's, the little lines aboutthem stood out. She rode low, like a limpet clinging, and her mind wason the two ahead--the man and the great bay horse. 

As she felt the wind sing by her cheeks, sting the tears beneath herlids, she shut her lips tighter and hugged the pommel closer. 

The green carpet went by beneath her like a blur. The thunder of ElRey's beating hoofs was like the sound of the cataracts when thecañons shot their freshets from the Rockface. 

The note of his speed was rising--rising--rising. The blood began topound in her temples with pride and exultation. 

She saw the distance narrowing just the smallest bit between her andCourtrey. Just the smallest trifle, indeed, but _narrowing_. 

"He ain't a-puttin' Bolt down to his best, " she told herself tensely, "I know what he can do. " And she remembered that ride from the mouthof Black Coulee to the pine-guarded glade--and Kenset. At that thoughtshe pressed her lips tighter. 

No thought of Kenset must come to her now--to weaken her with memoryof those pressing, vital hands of his above his pounding heart. 

No--she was herself again--Tharon Last, Jim Last's girl, the gun womanof Lost Valley--and yonder went her father's killer. 

She leaned down and called again in El Rey's ear. 

No slightest spurt of speed rewarded her--nothing but the rising note. Then she saw that the distance was widening--just a tiny bit. 

Truly it was widening. Courtrey, looking back, had caught the sun onher golden hair, on her face as white as milk. He saw that her handswere at her hips--loosely set back at her hips--and what thought hemight have had of mercy at her hands--what wild vision he might haveseen of speech with her--of parley--of persuasion--was dead. 

He leaned down and struck the Ironwood with his open hand. 

Bolt, the beautiful, leaped in answer. A little more--slowly--thedistance between pursuer and pursued widened. Then--Tharon blinked themist from her eyes to make sure--the gain was lost. Slowly, steadily, El Rey closed up the extra width. Then for a time there was no change. The open plain resounded to the roar of hoofs, the wind sang by liketaut strings struck. The earth was still that racing green blurbeneath. 

And still the electric note of rising speed hummed softly higher. 

If Jim Last rode his silver stallion to the goal of vengeance he mustsurely have been satisfied. The great shoulders worked like pistons, the whole massive body was level as the flowing floor beneath, thesteel-thewed limbs reached and doubled--reached and doubled--withwonderful power and precision. 

And then at last Tharon knew--knew that El Rey was gaining, slowly, steadily, surely. The splendid bay horse was running magnificently, but El Rey ran like a super-horse. His silver head was straight as alevel, his ears laid back, his nostrils wide and flaring, red asblood, his big eyes glowed with the wildness of savage flight. 

The great king was mad with speed!

Jim Last's girl was mad also--mad with the lust of conquest, ofrevenge. 

She rose a little from the stallion's whipping mane, and her blue eyesburned on the man ahead. 

"I said I'd get you, Buck Courtrey!" she muttered, "that some day I'drun th' Ironwoods off their feet--th' heart out of their master!

"Run, damn you--for it's your last ride!"

Then she dropped forward again and watched the distance closing down. 

Nearer--nearer--nearer!

The note rose another notch. 

Never in his life had El Rey run as he ran now. Always he had hadreserves. He had them now. The bottom of his power was not reached. 

Bolt was doing his best. Once he threw up his head and foam flew onthe wind--red foam that shot back and whipped on Tharon's hand, a wetpink stain, thinned and faded. 

At that sight an exultant cry, savage, inhuman, ugly, burst from herthroat. 

She was within long gunshot now--was closing her fingers lightly onthe blue gun-butts----. 

Courtrey heard that cry. 

He rose in his saddle--turned--flashed up his hand and fired. Quick asthe motion of the gun man was, Tharon Last was quicker. She droppedover El Rey's shoulder like a cat, firing as she went. 

Courtrey's bullet clipped the cantle of the big saddle an inch aboveher flattened leg across it. Hers did something else--what she haddreamed of. It struck that other wrist of Courtrey's, the left--andsent his six-gun tumbling. 

Once again she yelled as she came back in her saddle. 

And El Rey was closing--closing up the gap between. 

Once again Tharon raised her guns to shoot--both, this time, as herdaddy had taught her. This was the pinnacle of her life, her skill, her training. 

Never again would she live a moment like it. She laughed and crouchedfor the final act. 

But a sudden coldness went over her from head to foot, sent the hotblood shaking down her spine. 

What was Courtrey doing?

He rode straight up at last, like an Indian showing, and his bleedingleft hand swung at his side. With the other he had swept off his widehat, so that his handsome iron-grey head was bare to the summer sun. His keen hawk face was lifted. He made a spectacular figure--like awarrior, unarmed, waiting his end with courage. 

_Unarmed!_

That it was which struck Tharon like a hand across her face. The gunhe had used with his left hand was his only one! He had carried butone since that night at the Stronghold when she had first marked him. 

She should have known! Word of this had been about Corvan and theValley. 

And so she had Buck Courtrey at her mercy. She could close thelessening gap and kill him in his saddle----

But the icy blood still seemed to trickle down her back. 

She--and Jim Last--they had always fought in fair-and-open. Theywere no murderers. . . . They did not strike in the dark--shoot a man fromambush--nor kill a man unarmed. . . . And Kenset--Kenset of thefoothills--what had he said about the stain of blood--blood-guilt--cleanhands----

The girl caught her breath with a choking sob. 

The game was up. 

Neither Jim Last--nor Kenset--nor she--would shoot a man unarmed. 

And Courtrey was riding toward the Bottle Neck. 

He would go down the Wall to freedom. 

And the crosses in Jim Last's granite--they would be foreverunredeemed, a shame, a sadness, a living accusation!

Nay--not that! Not that!

She had promised--and the Law was waiting--the big Law of below. 

She was Jim Last's daughter still. 

She leaned closer to El Rey's neck--held her two guns ready--and rodewith the very wind. 

She was near now--she could see Courtrey's face, waxen white butfearless, his dark eyes turned back toward her in a sort of desperateadmiration. . . . Courtrey loved strength and courage and all things wildand fierce. She could see Bolt's staring eyeballs, his open mouth, gasping and piteous. One more moment--another--yet one more--then sherose in her stirrups and fired straight at the broad bay temple, shining and black with sweat!

The great gallant Ironwood went down in a huge arc--first hisbeautiful head, then the sinking arch of his neck, then the shouldersthat had worked so wondrously. He rolled on his back like a hoop, hisiron-shod hoofs spinning for one spectacular moment in the air. Thenhe lay at sudden ease, his still fluttering nose pointing directlyback the way he had come. 

With the first catching stumble of the true forefeet, the man on hisback had shot out of the saddle and far ahead. He landed twenty feetaway and squarely on his head and shoulders. Like Bolt, Courtrey'sbody turned a complete somersault--and lay still, at sudden peace. 

Tharon Last and El Rey went on like an arrow--they could not stop. 

When at last she did draw the great king down she was far and awayfrom the spot. She turned her head, panting and dizzy, and lookedback. . . . She could see the prone red heap that was Bolt--a little waybeyond that other, lesser, darker heap. . . . 

For a long time she sat on El Rey's heaving back and stared unseeinglyat the green earth where the short grasses quivered in the littlewind. 

There was a deathly white line about her lips, but her eyes blazedwith the fire that had characterized them from birth, the flickering, unfathomable flame that came and went. 

Then, presently, new lines came in her young face, unstable lines thatquivered and worked, and all the good green earth danced grotesquelybefore her vision, for a wall of tears shut out the world. . . . Shelaid her head down on El Rey's cloudy mane--and wept. 

 * * * * *

It was early dawn at Last's Holding. The sun was not yet up behind theeastern ramparts. The cottonwoods whispered in the dawn-wind, thespring beneath the milk-house talked and murmured. Out in the bigcorrals the cattle were beginning to stir and bawl. 

In the kitchen old Anita and young Paula had breakfast waiting for themen. 

Deep in that dim south room where the pale Virgin kept watch and ward, Kenset of the foothills slept in healing peace. 

And at the step of the western door, Billy stood by Golden--Golden thebeautiful, who ranked next to El Rey himself--and his face was liftedto Tharon who drooped against the lintel with her forehead on herarm. 

The boy held her hand clasped in both of his own, and there was ayearning tenderness in his soft voice when he spoke, a pride and joyineffable that glowed above the pain that was never to leave him. 

"It ain't that I love you less, Tharon, dear, " he said gently, "that Imust go. Not that, little girl. I'll love you till I die--that I knowin dead certainty. But I can't stay here--not where I'll have to seeyou givin' all your sweet self to another man. A good man, too, Tharon--I think there ain't a better one in th' land--but--well, --Ican't--that's all. I can't thank you for all you've done for me senceyou was a little mite of a girl--five years back, "--his voice broke abit, but he controlled it, "nor for th' joy you've given me--th' ridestogether--an' th' jokes an' playin'----"

He paused a moment, unhappily, and the mistress of Last's drooped moreheavily against the old adobe wall. 

"Nor for Golden here, " went on the rider, "we'll be pals as long as weboth live--nor fer-fer--" he stopped again, hesitated, lookedyearningly at the quivering cheek against the curving arm, and went onto the finish. 

"Nor fer that one kiss, Tharon--it's my one treasure for life, so helpme, God--that you give me that night. An' over all I want to thank youfer--fer--killin' th' Pomo half-breed in th' Cup o' God--_fer you donethat trick fer me_! Th' one stain on your dear hands--fer me--the_only_ one, fer Fate killed Courtrey, not you. His neck was cleanbroke when they picked him up. . . . That memory will keep me alive, willsave th' beauty of th' stars at night fer me, will make th' rest worthlivin'. . . . That one kiss. "

He stopped again and stood for a long time looking at her as if hewould fix forever in his memory the beauty of her, the fire, thespirit, the elusive quality that was Tharon Last herself. 

Then he sighed and smiled and gently shook the hand he held. 

"Come--tell me good-bye, Tharon, dear, " he said softly. 

For answer the mistress of Last's once again reached out her arms anddrew his head to her heart--once more pressed her lips upon his own. 

"Oh, Billy, " she said with a sound of tears in her voice, "Kenset'sth' one man--that's true, an' I'm helpless before th' fact--butthere'll never be another can take your place in my heart--there'llnever be no one to ride with me in th' Big Shadow in just th' sameway, Billy--to hold my hand as we come home to Last's with that samesweet, honest friendship, that don't need words! I've got mylife-love, but I've lost my life-friend--an' my heart's sore--sorewith pain!"

The rider lifted his face and it was glorified in the first rays ofthe sun that was rising over the eastern mountains. His gayly studdedbelt and riding cuffs, his spurs and the vanity of silver on his widehat caught the glow and sparkled brightly. Joy became paramount oversadness. 

"Don't you fret, Tharon, " he said, still in that soft voice, "I'malways at your shoulder in spirit--in body, too, if you ever want meor need me. So long. "

And he kissed both the hands he held, dropped them, turned and mountedGolden, waved a hand to all the Holding, and putting the horse to arun, went down the sounding-board as if he dared not look back. 

Until horse and rider were a tiny speck on the living green--untilthey passed the Silver Hollow and the mouth of Black Coulee, TharonLast stood in the western door and watched them with dim blue eyes. 

Ail the wide expanse of Lost Valley was still and sweet with dawn, smiling as if with a new and wondrous peace, the Vestal's Veilshimmered on the Rockface, the distant peaks above the Cañon Countrycut the skies. 

She scanned the little world about and felt this peace press down uponher soul--as if the questions all were answered, the duty done. 

Never in all her life before had Last's Holding seemed to her sosecure and settled, so sweet and to be desired. . . . 

Within it lay her destiny--the man in the cool south room. 

Without in the great Valley lay a future. 

Love was with her--friendship would be with her always in memory, oneglowing with its vital presence, the other softened and doubly sweetwith the sorrow of absence. 

She raised her hand and made the sign of the Cross between herself andthat disappearing speck, then she turned and followed old Anitacarrying gruels to that dim south room. 

THE END