Most of them were married and had families. Some of them had killings to 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 the rest. McIntyre was like him. One by one they came forward as Tharon called them by name, and leaning down, put their names or their marks to a sheet of paper which bore these few simple lines:

"We, the signers named below, do solemnly promise and pledge ourselves to stand together, through all consequences of this act, for the protection of our lives and property. For every piece of property taken from any one of us, we shall go together and take back it, or its 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 her letters, read it aloud. The names of Last's Holding headed it. The thirty names and marks—and of the latter there were many—stretched to the bottom of the sheet.

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

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

That night Tharon Last sat late by the deep window in her own room at the south of the ranch house. It was a huge old room, high walled and sombre. There were bright blankets hung like pictures on the walls, baskets marvelously woven of grass and rushes, thick mats on the floor made in like manner and of a tough, long-fibred grass that grew down in a swale beyond the Black Coulee, while in one corner there shone pale in the darkness the one great treasure of that unknown mother, an almost 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 when Anita, throwing back to her Mexic ancestors, worshipped with vague rites at its feet.

Always its waxen hands bore offerings, silent tribute from the girl's still nature. Sometimes these were the prairie flowers, little wild things, sweet and fragile. Sometimes they were sprays of the water vines that grew by the wonderful spring of the Holding.

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

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

She thought of Courtrey and Service and Wylackie Bob, of Black Bart and 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 of rulers and their helpless subjects. Jim Last could talk when he needed, though he was a man of conserved speech.

Yes, Courtrey was like a king in Lost Valley, absolute. She thought of the many crimes done and laid to his door since she could remember, of countless cattle run off, of horses stolen and shamelessly ridden in grinning defiance of any who might dare to identify them, of Cap Hart killed 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 scare their kind. Her soft lips drew themselves into a hard line, very like Jim Last's, and the heart in her ratified its treaty with the thirty men.

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

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

But she didn't intend to be killed. She was right, and she had listened enough to Anita to believe with a superstitious certainty, that right was invulnerable. For instance, if she and Courtrey should draw at the same second, she believed absolutely, that because she was in the right, her bullet would travel a bit the swifter, her aim be truer. She felt in her heart with a profound conviction that some day she would kill Courtrey. She thought of his wife, Ellen, a pale flower of a woman, white as milk, with hair the colour of unripe maize, and wondered if she loved the man who made her life hell, so the Valley whispered. Tharon wondered how it would seem to love a man, as women who were wives must love their men—if the agony of loss to Ellen could be as acute and terrifying as hers had been ever since that soft night in spring when her best friend, Jim Last, had come home on El Rey.

She thought of the grey look on his face, of the pinched line at his nostrils' base, and the tears came miserably under her lids, she laid her head on the cloth mat that covered the wide window ledge and wept like 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 she caught a faint sound out where the little rock-bordered paths ran in what she was pleased to call her garden, since a few hardy flowers grew by the spring's trickle, and she held her breath to listen. It was 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 saw him coming, in the mid-morning while the work of the house went forward. Paula, bringing a pan of milk from the springhouse spied him first and stopped to satisfy her young eyes with the unwonted appearance of him. She looked long, and hurried in to tell her mistress.

"Senorita," she said excitedly, "see who comes! A stranger who has different 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 of the 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 her grumbling.

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

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

"Where? When?"

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

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

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

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

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

It left him stripped of surprise, outwardly, before he was within speaking 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—was different from most faces they had ever seen, that it was open, smiling, easy, that he was straight as a ramrod, indeed, that he rode as if he feared nothing in the earth or the heavens, that he carried no gun, that he wore the peculiar uniform that Tharon had noticed before, and that there was something on his breast, a dark shield of some sort which made them think of Steptoe Service and his disgraced sheriff's star. This thought brought a frown to Tharon's brows, and it was there to greet the stranger when he rode up to the step and halted, his smart tan hat in his hand. The morning sun burned warmly down on his dark hair, which was brushed straight back from his forehead in a way unknown in those parts. His dark eyes, slow and deep but 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 his business. Paula drew back behind her mistress.

The man sat still on his horse and waited, too. The silence became profound. 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 her for the first time in her life for such a reason.

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

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

The man laughed delightedly, and swung quickly down, dropping his rein. Tharon noticed that. That much was natural. He held his hat against his breast with one hand and came forward with the same quickness, holding out the other. Tharon was not used to shaking hands with strange men. She gave her hand diffidently, because he so evidently expected it, and took it away swiftly.

"My name," he said, "is Kenset—David Kenset, and I am from Washington, D. C."

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

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

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

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

Her easy and constant association with the riders and vaqueros had dulled 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 the girl of a few moments before.

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

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

"I've come to live in Lost Valley, Miss Last," he said, "for a long while, 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, a place from which they imported gun men. Only this man wore no gun, and he 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 build myself a house," and he waved a hand toward the east where the ranges rolled up to the thickening fringes of the forest that marched back into the ramparts of the trail-less hills.

"I want to find an ideal spot, a glade where the pines stand round the edges, with a spring of living water running down, and where I can look down and over the magnificent reaches of Lost Valley. I shall make 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 for Courtrey, 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 in the 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 prated of Gov'ment. It was a farce, a synonym for juggled duty, a word to suggest the one-man law of the place, for even Courtrey, who made the sheriffs—and unmade them—did it under the grandiloquent name of Government. She looked at him keenly, and there was a sudden hardening in her young eyes.

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

"What?"

"No, sir."

"Are you in earnest?"

"Certainly am," said Tharon. "I ain't on good terms at present with anything 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," he answered, "but we are on unfamiliar ground. You have a wrong conception of Government, a perverted idea of law and what it stands for."

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

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

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

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

"You make me ashamed," said Tharon straightly, "but Last's ain't takin' chances these days. You may belong to Government, an' you may belong to Courtrey, an' I'm against 'em both."

She walked with him to the door, stepped out, as if with some thought to soften her unprecedented treatment of the stranger under her roof. She noted the trim figure of him in its peculiar garb, the proud carriage, 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. "Just on general principles."

But she shook her head.

"I can't take no favours from you when I've just took stand against you, 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 its rider were well down along the levels toward Black Coulee.

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

"He was so handsome, Senorita," said the girl, "to be so hardly dealt with."

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

"Saints forbid!" cried Paula instantly.

"Then keep your sighs for Jose an' mind your manners. Pick up that bundle."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He's goin' to stay, so he told me," went on the girl, "goin' to build a house up where the pines begin an' means to ride. But how'll he live? 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 him by?" asked Billy.

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

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

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

She went swiftly to the big desk in the other room and rummaged among its drawers for paper and pencil. These things were precious in Lost Valley.

Jim Last had had great stacks of paper, neat, glazed sheets with faint lines upon them, made somewhere in that mysterious "below" and brought in 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 signed themselves into the new law of the Valley.

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

Anything done upon them was of import, irrevocable.

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

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

The riders, clustered at her shoulder, watched the thing take shape and form. At the end of twenty painstaking minutes Tharon straightened and 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 took up 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 no call to kick. Don't you worry, Tharon, about this new bird."

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

"Forget th' gun man, Burt," said Billy, "this feller's a heap more interestin' to me, for I've got a hunch he's a poet. Now who on this footstool but a poet would come ridin' into Lost Valley with his badge o' 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 soft voice, "an' I'm sorry for him if he starts your 'interest,' so to speak. 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 is in for trouble enough without any side issues."

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

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

"Can't draw her dry," said Bent Smith, "pulled all of three hours with Nick 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 with conviction, "there ain't no artificial water-well extent that can hold a candle t' th' real livin' springs of a cattle country, when they're such 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' no mistake. 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 love my springs."

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

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

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

Last's Holding had missed its master at each turn and point. A thousand times did Conford, the foreman, catch himself in the act of going 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 for his keen insight. The vaqueros missed him and his open hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It came to Last's in eighteen hours, brought by a horseman who had carried 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 Lost Valley the little winds wimpled the grass where the cattle grazed, and brought the scent of flowers. In the thin, clear atmosphere points and landmarks stood out with wonderful boldness.

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

Far up at the Valley's head against the huge uplift of the jumbled and barren rocklands the scattered squat buildings of the Stronghold brooded like a monster.

Spread out on the velvet slopes below lay the herds that belonged to it, sleek fat cattle, guarded carelessly by a few lazy and desultory riders. Courtrey was too secure in his insolent might to take those rigid and untiring precautions which were the only price of safety to the lesser men of the community. Toward the south where the Valley narrowed to the Bottle Neck and the Broken Bend went out, there shimmered 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 and incessant wail of winds in time-worn canyons.

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

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

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

They knew—and she knew, also—that what they did this day, in the open sunlight, meant savage strife and bloodshed for some as sure as death.

For two hours they rode across the sunken range where the cottonwoods and aspens made a lovely and mottled shade, to reach at last the sharp ascent to the uplands above. When they topped the rim and started forward, the huge herds of Courtrey lay spread before them, bright as paint on the living green. Two thousand cattle grazed there in peace and plenty. Here and there a rider sat his horse in idleness. At the first sight of the solidly formed mass coming out of the Cup Rim on to the levels, these riders straightened in their saddles and rode in closer to their charges.

The eyes of the newcomers went over the bright pattern of the grazing cattle. A motley bunch they were, red, black and white, with here and there descendants of the yellows which none but John Dement had ever owned in Lost Valley. Dement, riding near the head of the line saw this and muttered in his beard.

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



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

Quick as a flash Tharon Last lifted the rifle that lay ready on her pommel 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 slide ten feet on its haunches.

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

"Dixon—Dement," called Tharon rising in her stirrups, "when we get to work 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 flank of the herd. Here a rider raised his arm and fired point blank at the leaders. 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 his defence 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 toward him. Then Buford, riding midway of the sweeping line, fired and the boy dropped his gun, swayed and clung to his saddle horn as his horse bolted 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 you kill him?"

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

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

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

In among the grazing cattle, many of which had raised startled heads to eye the intruders, went the men. They worked swiftly and deftly. They knew that they were in plain sight of the Stronghold and expected every 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 ten head of steers, as nearly as possible all white, to take the place of Dixon's band. Thomas and Black stood guard over them. Then they went back and took out yellows and yellow-spotted to the number of one hundred. It was fast work, the fastest ever done on the Lost Valley ranges, and every nerve was strained like a singing wire.

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

They rounded up the cut-outs, bunched them together compactly and swinging into a half circle, drove them rapidly back toward the oak-fringed edge of the Cup Rim. They passed close to where the slim boy stood by his horse, trying to wind the big red kerchief from his neck 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 her face. "You've made me false t' Courtrey. I'd die first."

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

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

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

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

For the first time in all his years of rising power in Lost Valley Courtrey felt a challenge. For the first time he knew that a tide was banking in full force against him. A red rage flushed up under his dark skin, and he raised a silent fist and shook it at the blue heavens.

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

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

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

The die was struck. Lost Valley was no longer a stamping-ground for wrong 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. The settlers walked about, smoking, or sat silently in the darkened living room. At midnight Tharon and young Paula made huge pots of coffee which they dispensed along with crullers.

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

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

By sundown the hundred head had been driven, hot and tired, into John Dement's corrals, the ten white steers were bedded by Black's Spring over toward the Wall. They had farther to go and would not reach Dixon'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. To each faction it had a deep significance.

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

To Tharon Last, busy at her tasks about the Holding, it was a vital matter. She felt a strong surge, an uplift within her. She had begun the 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 what it did to Courtrey himself. In him it set loose something which burned in him like a consuming fire. Where he had thought of Tharon Last before with a certain intent, now he thought of her in a sort of madness. He was a king himself, in a manner, an eagle, a prowler of great spaces, a rule-or-ruin force. Down there on the sloping floor of the Cup Rim had been a fit mate for him in the slim girl who had shaken her fist back at him in strong defiance.

He felt his blood leap hot at the thought of her. She was built of fighting stuff. No pale willy-nilly, like some he knew who wept whole fountains 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's straight 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 the blue veins showed. Her pale blue eyes, like the painted eyes of a china doll, were red with constant tears under their corn-silk lashes. The pale gold hair on her temples was often damp with the sweat that comes with agony of soul.

"It jes' seems I can't live another minute, Cleve," she would tell her brother 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 are singin' eternal down in th' runnel."

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

Here Courtrey had found them, both in their teens, and he had promptly taken them both along with their scant affairs. It was about the only thing to his credit that he had married Ellen, hard and fast enough, with the offices of a bona fide justice, a matter which he had regretted 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 king step lively for over a year. He saw the daily growing impatience with which Courtrey regarded his marriage.

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

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

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

The Stronghold was a huge place. The house was like the majority of the habitations of the region, built of adobe and able to stand siege against a regiment. It was shaded by cottonwoods and spruces, flanked by corrals and barns and sheds until the place resembled a small town.

Cleve Whitmore rode for Courtrey but his heart was not in Courtrey's game. 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 it was, that when the newly organized Vigilantes under Tharon Last came out in broad day and took back their own from Courtrey's herds, there was one at the Stronghold who laughed quietly to himself in sympathy with the defy.

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

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

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

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

Before the cabin was finished, Starret, who ran the regular pack-train, brought in a string of trunks and boxes which caused much curious comment in Corvan. These came up, after much delay, to be dumped in the door yard of the house in the glade, and Kenset felt as if the gateway to the outside world might close and he care very little.

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

And here was Romance, as witness the slim girl who had backed out from a group of men that first day of his coming—backed out with her guns upon them, himself included, and mounted a silver stallion, whose like he had not known existed. In fact, Kenset had thought he knew horses, but he stood in open-mouthed wonder before the horses of Lost Valley—the magnificent Ironwood bays of Courtrey's, with their wonderful long manes and tails that shone like a lady's hair, the Finger 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 of home, of individuality. A big dark rug, woven of strong cord in green and brown, came out and went down on the rough floor, leather runners were flung on the two tables, a student lamp of nickel, a pair of old candlesticks in hammered brass, added their touch of gleam and shine to table and shelf-above-the-hearth, college pennants, in all the colours of the rainbow, were hung about the walls between four fine prints in sepia, gay cushions, much the worse for wear, landed in the handsome chairs, and lastly, but far from being least, three long shelves beneath the northern windows were filled to the last inch with books.

When all these things had been put in place Kenset stood back and surveyed 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 between the southwest window and the fireplace he stacked neatly a mass of literature, all marked with the same peculiar shield of the pine trees and the big U. S. that shone always on his breast.

To the Drakes these things were of quick interest, but they asked no questions.

When the last thing had been done to the cabin they set to work and built a smaller cabin for the good brown horse which Kenset had bought far down to the south and west in the Coast Country, for Sam Drake told 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 for good, Kenset stretched himself, physically and mentally, and began his life in the last frontier.

He began to be out from dawn to dark riding the ridges, exploring the wooded slopes, the boldly upsweeping breasts of the nameless mountains, making friends with the rugged land. It was a beautiful country, hushed and silent, save for the soft song of the pines, the laughter of streams that ran to the Valley, cold as snow and clear as wind. 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 him intently. These invariably rode rapidly away on being discovered, not troubling to return his salute of a hand waved high above him.

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

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

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

She merely did not hold with law, and wanted him to have no false impressions. This incident furnished him with more food for thought than he was aware of in those first long days when he rode the silent forest.

What was Tharon Last, anyway? What did she mean by those words of hers about his law and hers? That they were not the same sort of law—that he 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 this girl of the guns that sent a thrill tingling in his blood already, made him recall each expression of her speaking face, each line of her lean young figure.

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

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

But with this wonder came a thrill. He had read romances of the great West in his youth and felt a vague regret that he had not lived in the rollicking days of '49. Now as he rode his new domain he smiled to himself and thought that out of a modern college he had been set back half 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 felt himself lucky.

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

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

And the cattle king narrowed his eyes and listened to his lieutenants with 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't see no signs of tillin'. He ain't fencin', nor goin' to fence, as near as 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's dark cheeks.

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

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

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

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

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

At the sound of his horse's hoofs on the stone-flagged yard Kenset saw her 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 heavy current of her dull life.

He came in close, drew up, and, with his hat in his hand, sat smiling down 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 at once, even under the disfiguring headgear, that here was a breaking heart laid open for all eyes. The very droop and tremble of the lips were 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, whose blue-veined hands were almost transparent.

"Yes," she said, and waited.

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

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

"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 I particularly 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, while the animal drew a long whistling breath and in turn rubbed the sticky brow band on its forehead on Kenset's arm.

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

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

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

He laid his hat on the earth beside him and smoothed the sleek, dark hair 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, at the trim leather leggings that encased his lower limbs, at his smooth hands, 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 of pity for her.

"Not as you mean, Mrs. Courtrey," he hastened. "I am in the United States 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 this country," he explained gently, but he saw that he was not making it clear.

"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, Kenset talked quietly for an hour and told her more than he had vouchsafed any other in Lost Valley about his work.

Gradually, however, he fell to talking to amuse her, for he saw the emptiness behind the big blue eyes, the aching void which there was nothing to fill, neither love nor hope.

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

When he ceased talking the silence became profound, for she had nothing to say and speech did not come easy to her anyway. He did not know that at the windows and behind the door-jambs of the deep old house were clustered almost a dozen dusky women and children, drawn from 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 left his face. He told Ellen of boat races on the Hudson, of theatres on Broadway, of college pranks and frolics, ranged over half the continent in little story and snatch of description.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As they waited, Courtrey, clad in dark leather chaps, his guns swinging, came toward them. At sight of Kenset he stopped short and an oath rolled from his lips. The kerchief at his neck was turned knot-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 upper lip.

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

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

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

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

That one man, however, stood by the watering trough, his hand on the neck of a drinking horse—Cleve Whitmore who watched Courtrey without blinking.

For a moment Kenset stood so, his hand extended, waiting. Then the colour 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 Lost Valley to stay. I had hoped to be friends with all my neighbours. It would 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 brown horse, flung up the rein, mounted and rode out of the Stronghold in utter silence.

His face was flaming, the blood of outraged dignity and deep anger beat in his temples like a drum. As he rode farther away he heard the embarrassing silence broken by the hoarse shouts of laughter of half drunken 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, 'If you help the Service to tame Lost Valley you've got your work cut out.' 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 for anything in the days that followed the taking of the herds from Courtrey's range.

They locked their doors at night, stood double guard at corral and stable. Mothers scattered throughout Lost Valley gathered in their little ones and watched the slopes and levels when their men were out.

But a strange quietness seemed to settle down upon them. That for which they waited did not materialize. Courtrey and his gun men rode into Corvan and up and down the Valley on mysterious missions which were as unsettling as open depredations, but nothing happened. In fact, Courtrey, burning with the new desire that was beginning to obsess him, was working out a new design.

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

His cold eyes, however, set in their narrow slits beneath the heavy brows, picked out every settler that he met and promised vague things for the future. He knew to a man who had ridden up from Last's that day, 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 with leaping pulse. The memory of that kiss, taken by violence at her western door, was with him night and day. She stood for right and the dignity of order. He meant, for a time, to play her hand.

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

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

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

Conford and Billy and the rest of the riders made strong bolts for all the doors of the house, reinforced the fences that held the herds at night, 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 to her calm and happy nature. She read over and over the two or three old books that had been at the Holding since she could remember, made new covers for the tables in the living room, kept the hands of the Virgin full of fresh offerings. But these things staled.

She began to long for the distances, the open spaces, the feel of the swooping stallion under her sailing down the wind. Courtrey or no Courtrey, she could not fight it down. So, on a golden day when all the boys were out with the herds and only the Indian vaqueros left in charge by Conford were at the stables, she flung the big saddle with its silver studs and its sombre stain on El Rey, mounted and went out and away like the wind itself. Not since the day of the raid on Courtrey's stolen herds had she been on El Rey's back and the first long leap and drop of the great horse beneath her set the lights to sparkling in her eyes, the blood to burning in her golden cheeks. She lay low on his neck and let him run, and her heart leaped up with lightness as it ever did when she rode in these thundering bursts.



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

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

Nay, she thought of Ellen, fragile white flower, of whom she had heard.

A softening came about her young mouth at thought of her, a shadow flickered in her blue eyes for a moment. Then it was gone and she laughed, a whooping gale of joy, there alone in the green stretches between the earth and sky, with the note of El Rey's speed steadily rising in her ears.

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

She went south toward the Black Coulee and she thanked her stars that her riders were grazing the herds north toward the Cup Rim. Here there was none to say her nay, to urge her with loving solicitude to go back.

The miles sped backward and she scarce noted their travel. She drew the king down a bit, slowed him from the swooping run, set him into the wonderful rock-and-away of the singlefoot and retied the ribbon on her hair. She wore no hat this day and the tawny cloud of her hair fluffed back from her forehead, straining at its bands, its loose ends standing up like fairy stuff all over her head. So, with her two arms held high above her and the reins in her teeth, she rode down by the mouth of Black Coulee—and up from the depths of the rugged wash that split the plain for seven miles there came across her path a man on a great bay horse.

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

That was Bolt, the mighty, and no mistake. None but Arrow carried his splendid head so regally, none other bore so huge a cloud of mane on his arching neck, so long a tail that spread like a fan between his knees 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 plain killing? No, she wanted more than that. She wanted to see him scourged and beaten, humiliated and robbed as he had robbed Lost Valley.

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

There, between her and the Holding, far distant, there were two riders—and they rode bay horses, both!

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

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

Courtrey came rapidly up toward her, swinging a bit to the west. The others, set somewhat apart to right and left, bore down upon her. It looked very much as if they meant to ride her down to the Black Coulee.

Once in its sheltering deep wash she would be helpless, cut off from escape. The Black Coulee went back into the eastern hills, lost itself up in the rugged and torturous clefts and chasms that cut the unknown ramparts, 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 she had some margin. There was space there to swing away from the man in front who came like the wind itself toward her. She caught the seeming of great speed and her heart leaped again.

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

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

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

At last the whispered comparisons that had stirred under the speech of the Valley concerning the Ironwoods and the Finger Marks was to have justification. For the first and only time, in her knowledge, they were to run.

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

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 out along the reins and began to call in his ear.

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

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

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

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

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

As her eyes swept into focus behind, the laughter slipped off her lips as 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 men who came after her. Not for gun-fire, nor for capture.

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

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

Then Tharon raised her eyes and saw that she had left the open land behind. The mountains were rising swiftly before, she was sweeping up their skirts. Trees flew by. She heard the singing of waters. The forests 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 to be the end of the race? And then, all suddenly, the woods seemed to fall away on either side, a gateway to open up before her. A lovely open glade spread into the heart of the forest and the great king thundered in between the guarding pines. Like a silver flame he shot up the sloping floor, slowed, changed and came to stop before a cabin that sat securely at the glade's head.

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

Tharon Last, her hair beating on her shoulders, her face pale as ashes, her breast heaving, looked back toward the opening in the trees, and saw Courtrey swing in a wide arc and circle past to disappear toward the north.

After him swept his two lieutenants, to fade swiftly from sight behind the 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 eyes were 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 the azure of her eyes, making them strangely exciting in their straight glance.

"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. The words were simple, sincere, unconscious of dramatic effect. They were as final as death itself, and he dropped his eyes unconsciously to the two guns at her hips. He wondered why she had ridden without a shot this 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' shot my daddy—in th' back, th' hound!"

"God!" said Kenset

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tharon sat quietly for a moment and looked down at him. She did not remove her hand from under his, neither did she seem to be conscious of it.

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

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

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

A strange man, surely.

Tharon wondered what made him so different from other men she had known. There was Billy who had come into Lost Valley from somewhere "below," and Conford, and Curly. Jack Masters had been born in the Valley. So had Bent Smith. These men were her men, like herself and Jim 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, dropped El Rey's rein, and stepped around his shoulder.

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

For the first time Kenset laughed.

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

He led the way to the door, stepped back and let her enter. As she did so she passed close to him and caught the scent of him, the clean soft 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 long pennants, like captured rainbows, tacked to the rough walls, the soft toned 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 stood and looked all around with that same half-insolent stare which had greeted Kenset at the Holding that memorable day.

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

The man stood in her presence for a moment, thereby giving a subtle effect of deference which was not wholly lost upon Tharon, though she would 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 the interior.

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

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

This time Kenset laughed in earnest, a ringing peal that startled El Rey 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, as you see, and my maps and several more pictures to put up, not to mention some Mexican pottery that I brought from Ciudad Juarez, and my chiefest treasure, a tapestry from France. That last I can't decide upon. I have two splendid spaces—over there between the northern windows, facing the door, and yonder at the end. Perhaps you will be good 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 your ride."

"Rested?"

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

Over the excitement had fallen a subtle shade, however, a hush, with the sight of Bolt so close behind El Rey. If it had not been for that grave thing she would have felt like a wound-up spring, intent with energy, filled with action. She was always so when El Rey ran beneath her. And this stranger spoke of rest! Tharon Last could ride all day without 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 in cloth. But first, if you'll be so kind, I want you to break bread with me. You said we would not be friends. I'm not so sure of that. There is 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 Tharon was 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 I don'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 her refuge. If it had not been for the glade in the pines, she wondered where she would be now—driven deep into Black Coulee, she made no doubt, 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 as kitchen, and took from a curtain-covered set of shelves, a shiny nickel object on spindly legs, which he brought and placed near Tharon on the table.

He struck a match and presently a clean blue flame grew up beneath it.

He lifted the lid and filled the small pot, thereby exposed, with water from the bucket on a bench. Then he delved in one of the big trunks 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 with grave eyes. And Kenset kept up a running stream of gay talk all the time. He wanted to make her at ease, to cover the thought of the strain between them, and how much he wanted to drive from his own mind the knowledge that this sweet and wholesome creature was a potential murderer, he did not know. From a can he measured chocolate. From a pan somewhere outdoors he brought milk. Sugar he added carefully as a woman, and presently he spread between them on the table a small repast that was strange to this girl of the wilderness.

He watched her with appraising eyes and saw that there was in her no consciousness of the unusual. She might have sat at meat in the big room 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 was careful not to ask about Lost Valley, to make mention of the circumstances that had brought her to his door. And so an hour passed as if it had been a bagatelle. The afternoon was waning when Tharon rose swiftly and abruptly terminated this first visit inside his home of 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 trunk and this time brought out a thing of rare beauty and value, a large tapestry, some four by six feet in size, a wonderful thing of soft and deathless hues, of cunning distances, of Greek figures and leaning trees, 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 do they make such things?"

"Far on the other side of the world," said Kenset gently, pleased with the wonder in her wide eyes, the evident and quick realization of beauty.

She whirled from it and glanced quickly at the two spaces on the rugged walls.

"There," she said, pointing to the broad expanse between the northern windows, "hang it there."

"Done," said Kenset, and went promptly for a hammer.

When the huge thick mat was securely stretched in place, Tharon helping to hold it while he pounded in the broad-topped tacks, Kenset stepped back and wondered how he had ever for a moment considered hanging it in any other spot. The tempered light from the door came in upon it, bringing out each enchanted charm, each tender vista.

"Wonderful!" he said to himself, "I never knew how lovely it was amid conventional surroundings!"

"Huh?" asked Tharon.

The man laughed in spite of himself and turned his eyes to hers, to lose his quick amusement in the earnest blue depths that seemed to question him at every angle.

"I mean that it looks better here in my cabin than it ever did on city walls."

"Why?"

"Well—I don't know. Contrast, perhaps."

Tharon stood a moment thinking.

"Perhaps," she answered slowly, "yes, perhaps. I guess that's why you seem so diff'rent to me. Jim Last used to say that was why th' Valley was 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 naive speech, as if she had 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 downright fashion of all her dealings, "I'm afraid you are—are too soft. You don'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 put the 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. "I don'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 his eyes once more to hers, "it would have to be—the last extremity, I know.

"The hands of all my forbears have been clean, so far as I know. I have a deep horror of that imaginary stain which human blood seems to leave on the hands of the killer. Blood guilt."

"You call it that? My daddy had his killin's, but they were all in fair-an'-open. I called him a man."

There was a ringing quality in her voice, a depth and resonance that spoke of war and heroes. The fire that all the Holding knew was suddenly in her eyes, flashing and flaming. Kenset caught it, and a thrill 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 fell on the cabin and they could hear the singing water running down the slopes.

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—in some manner. I don't know yet just what you're here for, nor if you're Courtrey'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 as you—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 say so."

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 the pleasant commonplace to the tense and unexpected. It was always so in these strange meetings with the people of Lost Valley, it seemed, as if he was never to find his way among them, the sane and quiet course that he must travel.

As they reached the step at the door sill El Rey stamped and whinnied a shrill blast. In through the gateway between the pines there came a rider on a running horse, Billy on Golden who ploughed to a stop before them, his grey eyes troubled.

"Hello, Billy," said Tharon. "How's this?"

"Been lookin' for you," said the boy. "We saw Courtrey an' his ruffians ridin' up east—watched 'em with th' glass, an' Anita said you rode south. Thought you might have met 'em."

"I didn't meet 'em, so to speak," she said, smiling, "though if I'd been on anythin' but El Rey I would. They tried to drive me into Black Coulee."

"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' Stronghold bunch."

The two men spoke, reached to shake each other's hands, and took a long survey that was mutual. As the two pairs of eyes met, a wall seemed to rear itself between them, a mist, a curtain, something intangible, but there.

They looked across the woman's shoulder, and from that moment she was to stand between, though what there could be in common between the man in the U. S. service and the common rider from Last's was not apparent. El Rey was eager for flight and by the time Tharon's foot was in the stirrup he was up on his hind feet, fore feet beating the air, silver mane like a flying cloud. The girl rose with him gracefully, threw her leg across the saddle, waved a hand to Kenset in the door, and in another moment they were gone away down the grassy slope, out through the opening, had stretched away along the oak-dotted plain, swung toward the north, and were out of sight.

The forest man turned away from the doorway, stood a moment looking over the cabin where the late light was making golden patterns on the green and brown rug, sighed and reached for his pipe.

Somehow all the spirit seem to have gone from the summer day. The long twilight was setting in.

"She wouldn't shake hands," he muttered to himself, "and what she said was true as death. She's sworn—and it is a solemn oath to her. God help the man who killed her daddy!"

Then once more he sighed, unconsciously.

"And Lord God help her!" he finished very gravely, "she is so sweet—so wild and spirited and sweet."