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 two young creatures atop were free as the summer winds, as buoyant and filled with joy of being. So they shot down along the levels, Tharon holding El Rey up a bit, though it was a man-size job to do so, and Billy's rein swinging loose on Golden's neck. They passed the last of the scattered oaks, came out to the green stretches. The sun was swinging like a copper ball above the Wall at the west. Down through the canyons the light came in long red shafts that cut through the cobalt shadows like sharp lances of fire and reached half across Lost Valley. All the western part of the Valley lay in that blue-black shadow. They could see Corvan set like a dull gem in the wide green country, the scattered ranches, miles apart.

They swung down to the west a bit, for Tharon said she wanted to go by the 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 widespread landscape they drew rein and dismounted. Here a huge boulder cropped from the plain and under its protecting bulk there lay as lovely a spring as one would care to see, deep and golden as its name implied, above its swirling sands, for the waters were in constant turmoil as they pressed up from below.

The girl lay flat at its edge and with her face to the crystal surface, drank long and deeply.

As she looked up with a smile, Billy Brent felt the heart in him contract 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 you sick?"

"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 was shattered.

"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, I think," he finished judiciously as he mounted Golden, "that I've caught 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 ahead under its cottonwoods, he let out the young horse for another stretch.

"Bet Golden can beat El Rey up home," he said over his shoulder.

"Beat th' king?" cried Tharon aghast, "you're foolin', Billy, an' I don't want to run nohow. I've run enough this day."

So the rider held up again and together they paced slowly up through the gathering twilight where long blue shadows were reaching out to touch them from the western Wall and the golden shafts were turning to crimson, were lifting as the sun sank, were travelling up and up along the eastern mountains toward the pale skies. Soon they rode in purple dusk while the whole upper world was bathed in crimson and lavender light 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, in th' 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 a woman."

The boy swallowed once, miserably.

"Always, Tharon," he said huskily, "always—when you want me—or need me—I'll be there, beside you. An' you don't need to even speak a word to me. I'm like th' dogs—there whether you call or not."

"I know," said the girl, and reaching over she caught the rider's hand, brown beneath its vanity of studded leather cuff, and gave it a little tender pressure.

Billy set his teeth to keep from crushing her fingers, and together they rode slowly up along the sounding slopes to the beautiful security and comfort of Last's Holding.



CHAPTER VII

THE SHOT IN THE CANONS

Kenset of the foothills was very busy. Between study of his maps and the endless riding of their claimed areas he was out from dawn till dark.

He found, indeed, that none but he, of late years, had ridden those sloping forest covered skirts. Some one, sometime, must have done so, else the maps themselves would not have been, but what marks they must have left were either gone through the erosion of the elements or been wantonly destroyed.

He fancied the former had been the case, for he saw no signs of destruction, and the very curiosity of the denizens of the Valley precluded familiarity with forest work.

So he laid out for himself the labour of a dozen men and went at it with a vim that kept him at high tension. Therefore he had little time to think of Tharon Last and the strange life in Lost Valley. Only when he rode between given points, unintent on the land around, did he give up to his speculations. At such times his mind invariably went back to that first day at Baston's steps and he saw her again as he had seen her then, tense, stooping, her elbows bent above the guns at her hips, coming backward along the porch, feeling for the steps with her foot.

Always he saw the ashen whiteness of her cheeks beneath her blowing hair.

Always he frowned at the memory and always he felt a thrill go down his nerves. What was she, anyway, this wild, sweet creature of the wilderness who held herself aloof from his friendship, and said that she was "sworn?"

Kenset, sane, quiet, peace loving, shook himself mentally and tried not to think of her. But day after day he came down along the edges of the scattered woods where the cattle grazed—on the forest lands—and looked over to where the Holding lay like a greener spot on the green stretches.

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 not reconcile this girl of Lost Valley with anything he knew.

He went over in his mind again and again the serene calmness of her in his cabin that day of the race with Courtrey, and shook his head in puzzlement.

But why should he trouble himself about her at all?

He had come here in his Government's service to reclaim its forest, to look 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 haunt him, waking or asleep.

He knew that it troubled him and was, in a way, ashamed. So he worked hard at his tasks, relocated boundaries, marked them with a peculiar blaze in convenient trees which looked something like this:

and set up monuments with odd and undecipherable hieroglyphics upon them.

And with each blaze, each mark and monument and sign, he drew closer in about him the net of suspicion and disapproval which was weaving in Lost Valley, for there was not one but ran the gamut of close inspection and speculation by Courtrey's men, by the settlers who came many 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 the land that had been theirs from time immemorial? What mattered the little copper-coloured badge on his breast? What mattered it that he was beginning to send out word of his desire to work with and for the cattlemen of Lost Valley, the settlers, the homesteaders?

What was this matter of "grazing permits" of which he had spoken at the Stronghold?

Permits?

They had grazed their cattle where and when they chose—and could—from their earliest memory.

They asked no leave from Government.

When Kenset rode into Corvan he was treated with exaggerated politeness by those with whom he had to deal, with utter unconsciousness by all the 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 to drink.

Serene, quiet, soft spoken, he came and went about his business, and sneers followed him covertly.

It was not long after Tharon's visit to the cabin in the glade, that Kenset, riding alone along the twilight land, passed close to the mouth of Black Coulee one day at dusk. He rode loosely, slouching sidewise in his saddle, for he had been to Corvan for his monthly mail and a few supplies tied in a bag behind his saddle, and he carried his broad hat in his hand.

The little cool wind that blew in from the narrow gorge of the Bottle Neck and spread out like an invisible fan, breathed on his face with a grateful touch. The day had been hot, for the summer was opening beautifully, and he had ridden Captain far. Therefore he jogged and rested, his arms hanging listlessly at his sides, his thoughts two thousand miles away.

At the mouth of Black Coulee where the sinister split of the deep wash came up to the level, there grew a fringe of wild poplar trees. They were beautiful things, tall and straight and thickly covered with a million shiny leaves that whirled and rustled softly in the wind, showing all their soft white silver sides when the breeze came up from the south as it did this day. There was water in Black Coulee, many small springs, not deep enough nor steady enough to count for water in a range country, but sufficient to keep the poplars growing on the rim of the great wash, to stand them thick on the caving sides. Whole benches of earth with their trees upon them slipped down these sides from time to time, making of the Coulee a mysterious labyrinth of thickets and shelves, of winding ways and secret places.

Kenset had heard a few wild stories about Black Coulee. Sam Drake had talked a bit more than most men of Lost Valley would have talked, and he had listened idly.

Now as he rode up along the levels and neared the dark mouth of the cut he studied it with appraising eyes. It was sinister enough, in all truth, a deep, dark place behind its veil of poplars, secretive, hushed.

The red light that dyed Lost Valley so wondrously at the hour of the sun's sharp decline above the peaks and ridges of the Canon Country was awash in all the great sunken cup, save at the west under the Rockface where the shadows were already dark.

Kenset drank in the beauty of the scene with smiling eyes. Already a love for this hidden paradise had grown wonderfully in his heart. He felt as if he had never lived before, as if he had never known beauty.

And so, dreaming a little of other scenes, smiling to himself, he jogged along on Captain and was nearly past the frowning mouth of the Coulee, when there came the sharp snap of a rifle in the stillness, and Captain changed his feet, sagged and quivered, then caught himself and leaped ahead. For one amazed moment Kenset thought the horse was hit. Then, as he straightened in his saddle and dropped his hand to catch up his hanging rein, he looked quickly down. Where he was accustomed to the smooth feel of the pommel beneath his palm there was a sharp raw edge. A splinter of wood stood up and a small flare of leather hung to one side.

A bullet, singing out of Black Coulee, had carried away part of the pommel.

Kenset shut his lips in a new line, gathered up his rein and drew the horse down to a walk with an iron hand.

Slowly, without a backward glance, he rode on across the darkening levels. 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 come to 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. Nothing happened; he had no outward sign of the distaste with which he was regarded by all factions alike, it seemed.

He met Courtrey face to face in Corvan one day and spoke to him civilly, but Courtrey did not speak. Wylackie Bob did, however—a sneering salutation that was a covert insult. Kenset touched his hat with dignity and passed on.

"Of all th' tenderfeet!" said Baston, watching the small by-play. "I b'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 pay in their veecinity."

But Wylackie looked at the weazened snow-packer with his snake-like eyes 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 the Valley, that a price was on his head with Courtrey's band for the daring leap which had saved the life of Tharon Last that day in spring.

Sooner or later that price would be paid, but Old Pete was true western stuff. He had lived his life, had had his day, and he was full of pride at the turn of fate which had made him a hero in a way at the end.

All the Valley stood off and admired Jim Last's daughter.

Pete basked in the reflected light. And Tharon herself had taken his gnarled old hand one day in Baston's store and called him a thoroughbred.

Folks in Lost Valley were chary of words, conservative to the last degree. That simple word, the handclasp, the look in the clear blue eyes, had been his eulogy.

It was whispered about, as was every smallest happening, and came to the ears of Courtrey himself, who had promised those vague things for the future on the fateful night. But Courtrey was playing a waiting game. He was obsessed with the image of Tharon. Sooner or later he meant to have her, to install her at the Valley's head. He had always had what he wanted. Therefore, he expected to have this girl with the challenging eyes, the maddening mouth, like crimson sumac.

Ellen?

Already he was setting in motion a thing that was to take care of Ellen.

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 he yet had sense enough to know that no fear of him dwelt in the huge old house under the cottonwoods. If Tharon herself did not shoot him, one—or all—of her riders would. The day of the armed band riding down to take her was, if not past, passing fast. He recalled the look of the settlers—poor spawn that he hated—whirling their solid column behind 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 that ached for her loveliness, the strong, resistant young body of her—to sate his thief's mouth with kisses. But he would call her to him of her own will, would taste the savage triumph of seeing her come suing for 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 the light in Lost Valley—the sane, quiet law of right and equality, typified by the smiling, dark-eyed man of the cabin in the forest glade.

Courtrey sent word to Tharon—an illy spelled letter, mailed at Baston's—that he had meant nothing by that race above the Black Coulee, except another kiss. There was Courtrey's daring in the affronting words.

She sent the letter back to him—riding in on El Key alone—with the outline 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 the Silver Hollow she stopped one breathless afternoon, drank of the snow-cold waters, shared them with El Rey, dropped the rein over the stallion's head and flung herself full length on the earth beside the spring. A clump of willow trees grew here, for every spring in Lost Valley had its lone sentinels to call its presence across the stretching miles. As the girl lay flat on her back with her hands beneath her head, she looked up into the blue heart of the arching skies where the fleecy white clouds sailed, and a sense of sweetness and peace came down upon her like a garment.

"You're sure some lovely spot, Lost Valley," she said aloud, "an' no mistake. I know, more'n ever as th' days go by that Jim Last was only jokin' 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 it smartly.

El Rey, always aloof, always touchy, never sure of temper, jumped and snorted. The girl laughed and crossed her feet and fell to speculating idly about the world that lay beyond Lost Valley. Little she knew of it. Only the brief words of her father from time to time, the reluctant speech of Last's riders, for the master of the Holding had laid 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 her environment, a longing for the "flesh-pots" of the world as he had styled it once, would have had short shrift at Last's. He would have received his time and "gone packing" swiftly.

And Tharon was content.

Barring the loneliness that had come with Jim Last's death, she was well content.

So she lay by the willows and hummed a sliding tune, a soft, sweet thing of minors and high notes falling, like rippling waters, and lazily watched the high white clouds sail by.

And as she lay she became conscious of something else in the drowsing land beside herself and her horse. She felt it first, this presence—a thin, dim vibration that sang in the earth beneath her. It stopped the wordless song on her lips, stilled the breath in her throat, set every nerve in her to listening, as it were.

Presently she sat up and felt quickly for the gun-butts in their scabbards. Then she parted the willows and looked out over the rolling slopes and levels. True enough. A horseman was coming in from the west, making for the Silver Hollow, but Tharon smiled and her fingers relaxed on the gun. This man rode straight—like a lance, she thought—and his mount was brown, a good-enough common horse, but no steed of Lost Valley.

Captain lacked the fire, the ramping keenness of the Ironwoods, the spirit and dash of the Finger Marks. For a long time the girl in the willows watched them. Then as they came near she rose and caught El Rey's bridle.

He was no gentleman, this big blue-silver king. He was savage and wild and imperious. He hated other horses with a quick hatred sometimes and had 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 below the Spanish spade bit in his mouth. She stood beside him, waiting, a slim, golden creature, tawny of hair and blue of eye, and the great horse towered above her mightily, his silver mane blowing up above his arching neck in the little wind that came from the south.

They made a picture that Kenset never forgot, as he swung round the willows and faced them.

El Rey screamed and pounded with his striped hoofs, but Tharon jerked him 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 caught the note. The sweet, disarming smile parted her lips and she was all girl at the moment, artless, innocent, unstained by the shadow of lawlessness and crime that seemed to ever hang above her in Kenset's thoughts.

"Are you?"

"I certainly am."

He swung down, gave Captain a drink at the edge of the spring farthest from El Rey, dropped the rein when he had finished, and swung around to face the girl. He took off his wide hat and wiped his forehead with a 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 his smiling dark ones. It seemed to Tharon that this man was always smiling.

"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 better one, up on th' Cup Rim Range, but Courtrey blew her up, damn him! She was called th' Crystal." Kenset caught his breath, mentally, all but physically, 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 unconscious as the long breath that lifted her breast at the memory of that outrage.

"We replaced her with a well—an' it's a corker. Mebby better than th' old Crystal, though she was a lovely thing. As clear as—as ice that'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' over spilt milk. What you ben a-doin' sence I helped you hang th' picture?"

"Won't you sit down?" Kenset stepped aside. "It is uncomfortable to stand 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 gun from 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 scabbard black against her brown skirt.

Kenset sobered at once. As ever when he let his mind dwell on that dark shadow which sat so lightly on this girl, he had no feeling for mirth.

A very real chill went down his spine and he looked intently into her eyes.

"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 reached for Captain's bridle. He pulled the horse around and pointed to the saddle horn.

"See that?"

She looked up quickly. With the sure instinct of a dweller in a gun man'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 drew down 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 the Holdin' an' th' meal I offered an' took, an' fer my words. I know now that you are—that you were—straight. I don't yet know what you may mean in Lost Valley with your talk of Government, but I do know you ain't a Courtrey man."

Kenset took the hand. It was firm and shapely and vibrant with the young life there was in her. He laid his other one over it and held it in a close clasp for a moment.

"I mean only right," he said, "sanity and law and decency. I think I have a big problem to handle here—aside from my work on the forest—a problem I must solve before I can be effective in that work—and I am more sincerely glad than I can say that my friend, the outlaw, took that warning shot at me. It ruined a perfectly good saddle, but it has made one point clear to you. I am no Courtrey man, and that's a solemn fact."

"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 little winds blowing up from the south to ruffle the hair at the girl's temples, these two sat by the Silver Hollow and talked of a thousand things, after the manner of the young, for Kenset found himself reverting to the things of youth in the light of Tharon's grave simplicity.

They looked into each other's eyes and found there strange depths and lights. They were aliens, strangers, groping dimly for a common ground, and finding little, though presently they fell once more upon the law in Lost Valley and earnestness deepened into gravity.

"Miss Last," said Kenset, thrilling at his daring, "why must this law dwell 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 Steptoe Service. Can't you judge from them?"

"Surely, so far as they two go. A bad man and a bad sheriff. But they are not all the officers of this County. Where and who is your Superior Judge?"

"Poor ol' Ben Garland. Weaker'n skim milk. Scared to say his soul's his 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 some raw 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 is Corvan, you know, of course."

"District Attorney?"

"Tom Nord. Keen as a razor an' married to Courtrey's sister. Now do you see why this is th' law?" She, too, tapped the gun.

Kenset frowned and looked down along the green range. He thought of the unpainted pine building in Corvan which was the Court House. A strange personnel, truly, to invest it with authortity!

"I see," he said briefly, "but there must be some way out. This is not the right way, the way that must come and last."

Tharon's lips drew into the thin line that made them like her father's. "It's th' law that's here," she said and there was an instant coldness in her voice, "an' it's th' law that'll last until Courtrey or I go down."

The man, watching, saw that thinning of the lips, the hardening of all the 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 and drew 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 the next second. However a warm surge of feeling shot through him with the quiet resting of that firm brown hand between his own, and he held it tighter. Kenset had thought he was sophisticated, that little or nothing could stir him deeply—not since Ethel Van Riper had gone to Europe as the bride of the old Count of Easthaven. That had been four years 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 in the heart of Lost Valley—and the blood surged in his ears, the levels and slopes danced before his vision.

"Miss Tharon," he said, for the first time using her given name, "I beg your pardon. You are strong, simple, serene. You know your land and its ways. I am an alien, an interloper—but I can't bear to think of you as waiting for the time to kill a man—or to be killed in the killing. 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 hear it! I thought you were a real man, maybe, but you're not! You—you're a woman! A soft woman—I hate th' breed!"

Her face was flushed, for what reason Kenset, stunned by her vehement words, could not tell. She flung the rein up and followed it, leaping to saddle like a man.

"I tol' you we couldn't be friends!" she cried, her eyes blazing with sudden fire, "there ain't no manner of use a-tryin'."

Kenset, springing forward, caught El Rey's bit. The stallion reared and struck, but he held him down.

"There is use, Tharon," he panted. "It's vital! Since that day on Baston's steps, when you backed out past me I have had you in my mind—my thoughts by day and night—there is use, and I'll keep your hands from blood—Courtrey's or any other—if it takes my life—so help 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 the willows and was gone around toward the north—there was only the sound of hoofs ringing on the earth. Kenset, left alone where the Silver Hollow bubbled softly above its snowy sands, passed a trembling hand across his eyes and stood as in a trance.

What did it mean? What had he promised? What vital emotion had gripped him that his usually quiet tongue had rushed into that torrential speech 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 her hips! A rider of wild horses!

Slowly, as if he had gained an added weight of years, he reined Captain and swung himself up. He rode east from the spring toward the lacy and far-reaching skirts of the forest, and for the first time he saw the rolling country with tragic eyes.

It held deep issues—life and death and the passing or continuing of regimes and and dynasties—but it was a wondrous country, and, come good or bad, it had become his own. He swung around in his saddle and looked far back across the Valley. He saw the golden light on its uncounted acres, the shadow falling at the foot of the great Rockface, the mighty Wall itself with the silver ribbon of the Vestal's Veil falling straight down from the upper rim, the distant town, looking always like a dull gem in a dark setting, and a thrill shot to his heart.

Yes, if he lived to do his work in the hidden Valley—if he was shot this 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 racial haunts and was at home.

So he rode slowly up among the scattered oaks with his hands folded on the mutilated pommel, and he knew that his lines were definitely cast.

* * * * *

Tharon Last rode into the Holding and dismounted in unwonted silence.

There was a frown between her brows, an unusual thing. She turned the stallion into his corral, dragged off the big saddle to hang it on its peg, flung the studded bridle on a post.

The men were not in yet. Far toward the north beyond the big corrals she could see the cattle grazing toward home. A surge of savage joy in her possessions flooded over her. These things were her own. They were what 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 though all the strangers in the world came to Lost Valley and prated of blood-guilt.

But for some vague reason which she could not have analyzed had she wished, she went to the paled-in garden where the silver waters trickled and searched among the few flowers growing there for some blossom, sweeter, tenderer, more mild and timid than usual for the pale hands of the Virgin in the deep south room.

With the posy in her fingers she slipped quietly to her sanctuary and knelt before the statue, pensive, frowning, vaguely stirred. She whispered the prayers that Anita had taught her, but she found with a start that the words were meaningless, that she was saying them mechanically.

Her mind had been at the Silver Hollow, seeing again the forest man's dark eyes, so grave, so quiet, so deep—her right hand was conscious as it had never been in all her life before. She heard a strange man's condemning 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 cattle were streaming into the far corrals under their dust, the riders were shouting, young Paula sang in the kitchen, and Anita passed back and forth about the evening meal.

* * * * *

There was a slim moon in the west above the Canon Country. The skies were softly alight, high and vaulted, deep and mysterious and sweet.

World-silence, profound as eternity, hung tangibly above Lost Valley and the Wall, the eastern ramparts of the shelving mountains, the rocklands at the north. There was little sound in all this sleeping wilderness.

Bird life was rare. The waters that fell at seasons from the open mouths of the canyons half way up the Rockface were dried. Down in the Valley itself there could be seen the lights of Corvan which never went out from dusk to dawn. Far to the north a black blot might have been 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 procession had crawled, three burros, their pack-saddles empty save for a couple of sacks tied across each, and a weazened form that followed them—Old Pete, the snow-packer, bound on his nightly journey to the Canon Country for the bags of snow for the cooling of the Golden Cloud's refreshments.

He was a little old man, grotesque and misshapen, yet he followed briskly after the burros, which were the fastest travelers of their kind in the land. He rolled on his bandy legs and kept the little animals on a constant trot with the wisp of stick he carried and the deep, harsh cries that heralded his coming for a mile ahead and sent the echoes reverberating between the canyon walls. A little north of Corvan he had followed the Rockface close for a distance, then suddenly turned back on his tracks and disappeared, burros and all. This was the invisible entrance to the Canon Country, a narrow mouth that opened sidewise into the very breast of the thousand-foot Wall and led back along a thin sheet of rock that stood between the gorge and the Valley. The floor of this cut or canyon, which was so narrow that the laden burros had a "narrow squeak" to pass, as Pete said, lifted sharply. It rose smoothly underfoot in the pitch darkness, for the cut was roofed in the living rock five hundred feet above, and climbed for a mile. It was a dead, flat place, without sound, for the footsteps of the burros and the man fell dully on the soft and sliding floor, and it seemed to have no acoustic properties.

At the end of the mile this snake-like split in the solid rock came suddenly out into a broader, more steeply pitched canyon whose walls went straight up to the open skies above. Here there were heaps and piles and long slides of dead stone, weathered and powdered, that had fallen from time to time from the parent walls. This in turn led up and on to other breaks and splits and cuts, all open, all lifting to the upper world, and all as blind and dangerous to follow as any deathtrap that old Dame Nature ever devised. Here, at any crosscut, any debouching canyon, a man might turn to his undoing, might travel on and up and never reach those beckoning heights, seen clearly from some blind pocket he had wandered into, might never find his way back to the original canyon among the continuous cuts that met and crossed and passed each other among the towering points and sheets.

But Old Pete knew where he was going. Not for nothing had he threaded these passages for fifteen years. He knew the Canon Country for the lower part better than any man in the Valley, if Courtrey be excepted.

So this night he climbed and shouted to his burros and thought no more of the sounding splits, for here the echoes raved, than he would have thought 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 visited this cut, a deeper drop into the nether world of rock, and cut his supplies from its surface. Every season he took what he needed, leaving a widening circle at the edge from which he worked, where the cut he traveled passed the mouth of the pent canyon, and every year the snows, sifting from high above, leveled it again. There was no known outlet for this glacier-like pack, no sliding chance, yet it was always on a certain level—each summer seeming to lose just what it gained in winter. It lay level at the mouth of the passing cut, was never filled higher.

Starting at dusk from Corvan, Pete reached his destination around two o'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 on the eastern ramparts.

But this night Old Pete, sturdy, fearless, unarmed, was not to see the accustomed pageant of the rising sun, the fleeing veils of shadows shifting on the Valley floor that he had watched with silent joy for all these years.

This night he was well down along his backward way, shouting in the darkness, for the slim moon had dropped down behind the lofty peaks above, when all the echoes in the world, it seemed, let loose in the canyons and all the weight of the universe itself came pressing hard upon his dauntless heart with the crack of a gun.

"Th' price!" whispered Old Pete as he fell sprawling on his face, "fer pure flesh!" With which cryptic word he bade farewell to the sounding passes, the tenets of manhood as he conceived them, the valour, and the grumbling at life in general.

The little burros, placid and faithful, went on and saw the pageant of the dawn from the hidden gateway in the Wall, crept down the Rockface, single file, and at their accustomed hour stood at their accustomed place before the Golden Cloud.

It was Wan Lee, Old Pete's bete noir, who found them there and ran shouting through the crowd of belated players in the saloon's big room, his pig-tail flying, his almond eyes popping, to upset a table and batter on his master's door and scream that the "bullos" were here, "allesame lone," and that there was blood all spattered on the hind one's rump!



CHAPTER VIII

WHITE ELLEN

So old Pete, the snow-packer, had paid the price of gallantry. The bullet he had averted from Tharon Last's young head that day in the Golden Cloud but sheathed itself to wait for him. All the Valley knew it. Not a soul beneath the Rockface but knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who, or whose agents, had followed Pete that night to the Canon Country. Whispers went flying about as usual, and as usual nothing happened.

When the news of this came to Last's Holding the mistress sat down at the big desk in the living room, laid her tawny head on her arms and wept.

There was in her a new softness, a new feeling of misery—as if one had wantonly killed a rollicking puppy before her eyes. Those tears were Old Pete's requiem. She dried them quickly, however, and set another 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 at the Court House steps and went boldly in to the sheriff's office.

Behind her were Billy, like her shadow, and the sane and quiet Conford.

Steptoe Service, fat and important, was busy at his desk. His spurs lay on a table, his wide hat beside them. The star of his office shone on his suspender strap.

"Step Service," said the girl straightly, "when are you goin' to look into 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 of Menlo 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 whirled from the Court House.

As she ran across the street to where the Finger Marks were tied, she came 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's shoulder, her eyes upraised to his, "an' see what law there is in Lost Valley! Step Service has buried th' snow-packer—without a by-your-leave from nobody! Th' man—or woman—that kills Courtrey now 'counts for three men—Harkness, Last an' Pete. I'm on my way to th' Stronghold."

She whirled again to run for the stallion, but the forest man leaned down and caught her shoulder in a grip of steel.

"Not now," he said in that compelling low voice, "not now. I want to talk 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 anger at 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, her lips apart, seemed struggling against an unknown force. She put up a hand and tried to dislodge his fingers on her shoulder, but could not.

Presently she wet her lips and looked around the street, already filled 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 the steps of Baston's store a few cowboys watched. There were no Stronghold men in town, for it was too early in the day.

In silence Kenset led out of town at a brisk canter. His lips were set, his eyes very grave.

In the short gallop that followed while they cleared the skirts of the town, he did some swift thinking, settled some heavy questions for himself.

He was about to take a decided step, to put himself on record in something that did not concern his work in the Valley.

He was going directly opposite to the teaching of his craft. He was about to take sides in this thing, when he had laid down for himself rigid lines of non-partisanship. His mind was working swiftly.

If he flung himself and his knowledge of the outside world and the law into this thing he sunk abruptly the thing for which he had come to Lost Valley—the middle course, the influence for order that he had hoped 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 this blue-eyed girl from riding north to challenge Courtrey on his doorstep.

The blood congealed about his heart at the thought.

Where the rolling levels came up to the confines of the town they rode out far enough to be safe from eavesdroppers, halted and faced each other.

"Miss Last," said Kenset gently, "I'm a stranger to you. I have little or no influence with you, but I beg you to listen to me. You say there is no help for the conditions existing in Lost Valley. That outrage follows outrage. True. I grant the thing is appalling. But there is redress. There is a law above the sheriff, when it can be proven that that officer has refused to do his duty. That law is invested in the coroner. Your coroner can arrest your sheriff. He can investigate a murder—he can issue a warrant and serve it anywhere in the State. He can 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 to stand behind him? You saw what happened to Pete. He struck up Courtrey's arm when he shot at Tharon one night last spring. Th' same thing'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 do no shooting, something like that will be pulled off here, and shortly."

He looked directly at Tharon, and for the first time in her life she felt 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 grey beneath his tan. He saw something which none other did, a thing that darkened the heavens all suddenly.

"Then," said Kenset quietly, "we'll have to do without your promise and go ahead anyway. We'll ride back to town, demand of Service a proper 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 our troubles? 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 falling into line at his side.

When Kenset, quietly impervious to the veiled hostility that met him everywhere, faced Steptoe Service and made his request, that dignitary felt a chill go down his spine. Like Old Pete he felt the man beneath the surface. He met him, however, with bluster and refused all reopening of a matter which he declared settled with the burial of the snow-packer in the sliding canyons 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 summer sunlight once more, "if you have any friends whom you think would stand for the right, send for them."

"Th' Vigilantes," said the girl, "we'll gather them in twenty-four hours."

"The Vigilantes?"

"Th' settlers," said Conford.

"All right. Until they are here we'll guard the mouth of this canyon that leads into the Rockface, as I understand it. Now take me to this man Banner."

At a low, rambling house in the outskirts of Corvan they found Jim Banner, sitting on the edge of his bed, undeniably sick from some acute attack. His eyes were steady, however, and he listened in silence while Kenset talked.

"Mary," he said, "bring me my boots an' guns. I been layin' for this day ever sence I been in office. I wisht Jim Last was here to witness it."

In two hours Kenset was on his way to the blind mouth of the pass that led into the Canon Country, Tharon was shooting back to the Holding on El Rey to put things on a watching basis there, while Conford and Billy went south and west to rouse the Vigilantes.

With Kenset rode Banner, weak and not quite steady in his saddle, but a fighting man notwithstanding.

All through the golden hours of that noonday while he jogged steadily on Captain, Kenset was thinking. He had food for thought, indeed. He carried a gun at last—he who had ridden the Valley unarmed, had meant never to carry one. He felt a stir within him of savagery, of excitement.

He meant to have justice done, to put a hard hand on the law of Lost Valley. Murders uninvestigated, cattle stolen at will, settlers' homes burned over their heads, their hearths blown up by planted powder when they returned from any small trip, their horses run off—these things had seemed to him preposterous, mere shadows of facts. Now they were down to straight points before him, tangible, solid. He got them from the 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 door entered, made his bed just inside the dead black passage, and watched while Banner, weary and still weak, slept in his blankets beside him.

This was new work for Kenset, strange work, this waiting for men who called themselves the Vigilantes—for a slim golden girl who rode and swore and pledged herself to blood!

More than once in the quiet night that followed, Kenset wiped a hand across 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 burned him when he thought of her pulling those sinister blue guns on Courtrey? Did he fear to see her kill Courtrey—to see that shadowy stain on her hands—or did he fear something worse, infinitely worse—to see Courtrey, famous gun man, beat her to it!

He shuddered and sweat in the clear cold of the starlit night and searched his bewildered heart. He could find no answer save and except the 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 so coolly of this promised killing! He recalled the earnest frown between her brows, the simple directness of her duty as she saw it and told it to him.

Either way—either way—she was lost to him forever—There he caught himself and started all over again.

What was she to him?

What could she ever be? She with her strange soul, her lack of soul!

What did he want her to be? One moment he ached with her loveliness—the next he shuddered at her savagery.

He did not want her to be anything! Why not go out to the dim and half-remembered world that he had left, the world of lights, padded floors and marble steps, leave this impossible land with its blood and wrongs? Nay, he could not leave Lost Valley. He was as much a part of it as the grim Rockface itself, the Vestal's Veil eternally shimmering in its thousand feet of beauty. Life or death, for Kenset, it must be here.

So he waited and listened and watched the stars wheeling in everlasting majesty, and he found his hands falling now and again upon the gun-butts at his sides!

Near dawn Banner awoke, refreshed and stronger, and made him lie down for a few hours' sleep.

When he awoke the sun was well up along the heavens and Banner was offering him a piece of dry bread and some jerky, spiced and smoked and 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 along th' Wall at th' south—that'll be Jameson, Hill and Thomas, an' some others—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' up from 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, bent on the second step of the program to which they had pledged themselves that night at Last's Holding. Tharon was there, too, and with her Bent Smith on Golden.

It was a goodly number who left their horses in charge of Hill and Dixon at the blind mouth and entered the long black cut. They climbed in low spoken quiet, their voices sounding back upon them with an odd dead effect. They went faster than Old Pete was wont to travel, for they meant to reach the spot of the tragedy before the early shadows should begin to sift down from the high world above. Tharon went eagerly, her eyes dilated.

Always she had dreamed of the Canon Country. Always she had wondered what it was like. When she left the mouth of the black roofed cut and came out into the narrow, rockwalled canyon with its painted faces reaching up into the very skies, she gasped with amaze. Above her head she could see the endless cuts and crosscuts, the standing spires and narrow wedgelike walls that made a labyrinthian maze.

Billy, close beside her, as always, watched her with a pensive sadness.

And so the Vigilantes went in and up along the lower ways. There were those among them who had been here before, who from time to time had accompanied the snow-packer on his nightly trips just for the curiosity of the thing. These several men, among whom were Albright from 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 a running walk.

And so it was, that, while the sun was still shining on the high peaks above and the canyons were filled with a strange pink light reflected from the red and yellow faces of the rock, the Vigilantes came suddenly to a halt, for Albright had stopped.

"Here's where it happened," he said, "there's a blood-sign." And he pointed to the Wall at a spot about breast high. A thin dark line, no wider than a blade of grass and about as long, spraying out to nothing at the upper end, leaned along the rock like a native marking. No other 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 of dust-like powdery rock-slide that lay everywhere along the walls.

It took Albright five minutes by Kenset's watch to find the disturbed and clumsily smoothed dump which held all that was mortal of the snow-packer.

"Miss Last," said Kenset as the men began to dig with the spades brought 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 Old Pete. Rolled head-first into a shallow hole—no doubt with jest and laughter—it was his booted foot which first came to view, sticking grotesquely up through the loose slide-stuff.

It was brief work and grim work that followed, and soon the weazened form, bent and stiffened into something hardly human, lay in the soft pink light on the canyon's floor.

Jim Banner knelt and examined it carefully and minutely, then every man in the group did likewise. They found evidence of one simple, staring fact—Old Pete had been shot squarely from behind, a little to the left.

The bullet had undoubtedly pierced the heart—a great gaping hole in the left centre of the breast in front attesting its course.

"Here," said Albright, coming back from a short distance down, beneath the 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 and leave 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 floor until 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 the two began to scan the walls, the floors, the heaps of rotted rock, the loose and tumbled boulders, not yet decomposed, that lined the cut on both sides.

They stood in their tracks and looked, and the concentration in their eyes 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 the wall 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 of her people.

"Some one went along th' Wall here," he waved a slender brown hand at the canyon face. "Three signs—here—here—here."

He indicated the heights he had scanned. They stepped a bit nearer and looked. Several pairs of Valley eyes saw what Dick Compos had seen, a sign so fine that few would have called it that—merely a brushing, a smoothing of the fine-sandstone surface where a man's shoulders, his hips, 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 canyon to where that thin line sprayed the face. A close shot, such as would be necessary in the darkness of the cut. Albright and Compos both stepped to the rock and stood looking with those narrowed, concentrated eyes.

Suddenly Albright, looking back across his shoulders, moved like a cat and picked up something from ten feet away.

He held it on his palm—an empty shell, such as fitted a .44 Smith and Wesson.

He scanned it minutely, turned it over this way and that, looked at it fore 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 be going back to Corvan."

And so it was that Old Pete, the snow-packer, went back in state to the Golden Cloud, by relays on men's shoulders down the sounding passes, through the dead cut, by pack-horse across the levels, lashed stiffly to the saddle, a pitiful burden.

Tharon Last, riding close after the calm fashion of a strong man in the face of tragedy, thought pensively of that night in spring when this 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 mind that Old Pete should sleep in peace under the pointing pine at Last's Holding—and that his cross should also stand beside those other two in the carved granite.

Billy, watching, read her mind with the half-tragic eyes of love.

Kenset, seemingly unconscious, but keenly alive to everything, was at great loss to do so.

He hoped, with a surging tenseness, that this fateful thing was sliding over into his hands to work out, his and Banner's. He knew full well that he and Banner both were like to be slated for an early death, but he did not care. In Corvan, night had fallen when the cavalcade passed through.

Bullard of the Golden Cloud had the grace to come out and look at the little old man who had worked for him so long and faithfully. But that was all. They carried him home to Last's and buried him decently at dawn.

Then the Vigilantes again rode out. At their head was Tharon; though both Kenset and Billy tried to dissuade her.

At Corvan, Banner went through the town like a wind, asking for the gun of every man he met. By noon every .44 had been examined, one shell exploded. Not one left the nicked, uneven sign of the mysterious hammer which had snapped its death into Old Pete's heart.

When the sun was straight overhead and all Lost Valley was sweet with the summer haze, the Vigilantes, close packed and silent, swung out toward the Stronghold.

It was blue-dusk when they drew up at the corrals beside the fortress house. 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 the board floors, inside, a woman's pleading voice, and the cattle king came swinging out, his hands at his waist, his two guns covering the crowd.

Tall, straight as a lance, his iron-grey head uncovered, he was a striking figure of a man. His henchmen watched him sharply. At his side clung the slim woman, Ellen, her milky face thin and tragic. He shook 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 demand t' 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, and gotten 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 face of Tharon Last and drank in its beauty hungrily.

Presently he shifted his gaze and regarded Kenset with a cold light that 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 at death and torture in Round Valley became melting soft as it addressed the 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'll drive this bunch o' spawn out o' here so quick it'll make your head swim! What do you think you're doin'?"

"I don't think. I know now. Know what we can do—what th' law means."

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 Arizona stranger were suddenly in the foreground, hands hanging apparently loose and careless, in reality tense as strung wires, ready to snap with fire and lead.

The moment was pregnant. The very air seemed charged with danger and death.

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 far over 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 right arm, and fired with his left. His ball went high in the air, wild. The blood from that tossed right hand spurted over Wylackie Bob beside him, the gun it had held went hurtling away along the earth.

There was a movement, a surge, the flash of guns and one of the settlers tumbled from his saddle, poor Thomas of the doubting heart. Courtrey's men flashed together as one, thundered backward to the wide doorstep, pressed together, waited. The voice of Kenset rang like a clarion.

"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 and snatched it from the spot where it had fallen.

Tall, white as a ghost in the rose-pink light that was tinged with purple, 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 out I'll pull th' trigger."

She was tragic as death itself. The big blue wells of her eyes were black with the spreading pupils. Dark circles lay beneath them.

Her blue-veined hands were so thin the light seemed to shine through them.

Her long white dress clung to her slim form. From far back by the corral fence Cleve Whitmore watched her silently, his hands clenched hard.

Tharon Last looked at her with wide eyes. She had forgotten all about this woman in the passionate hatred of Courtrey and the desire to pin his crimes upon him. Now she wet her lips and looked at Ellen long and silently. The pale lips were quivering, the long arm shook as it held the gun.

"God!" whispered the girl, watching, "she loves him! Like I loved Jim Last! Th' pain's in her heart, an' no mistake!"

Then, as if something strong within her folded its iron arm upon itself, she began to back El Rey. "Back out!" she called, "we ain't no woman-killers!"

With one accord, carefully, watching, the Vigilantes began to back, counting the seconds, expecting each moment to witness the most pitiful 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, out in front they turned as one man and rode away from the Stronghold—and Jim Banner was swearing like a fury, steadily, in a high-pitched voice.

"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 to it! 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 down th' Wall, s'help me!"

But Tharon Last forged to his side and gripped his arm in her strong fingers.

"Shut up, Jim Banner," she said tensely. "You've only begun. That's th' gun, I make no doubt, an' Ellen knew it—but if we're worth killin' we'll dig into this harder'n ever. Here's poor Thomas, makes one 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, Jose and Anita set up a steaming meal, and they ate like famished 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 his heart.

"Lord, Lord," said Billy to himself, "she's listenin' when he speaks like she never listened to any one before!"

In Kenset's mind drilled over and over again the ceaseless thought "A hand 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 he spoke her name beneath his breath.

But other things were crowding forward—he was leaning forward telling that circle of grim, lean faces, that if they could not handle this thing themselves, there were those in the big world of below who could—that there were men of the Secret Service who could find that gun no matter where Courtrey or Ellen hid it, that Lost Valley, no matter what its isolation or its history, was yet in the U. S. A., and could be tamed.

Then the Vigilantes were gone with jangle of spur and bit-chain, and he was the last to go, standing by Captain in the dim starlight. Tharon stood beside him, and for some unaccountable reason the grim purpose of their acquaintance seemed to drift away, to leave them together, alone under the stars, a man and a maid. Kenset stood for a long moment and looked at the faint outline of her face. She was still in her riding clothes, her head bare with its ribbon half untied in the nape of her slender neck.

The tree-toads were singing off by the springhouse and the cattle in the big corrals made the low, ceaseless night-sounds common to a herd.

The riders were gone, the vaqueros were at their posts around the resting stock, the low adobe house was settling into the quiet of the night.

Miserably Kenset looked at this slip of a girl.

She was strange to him, unfathomable. There were depths beneath the changing blue eyes which appalled him. How would he feel toward her when 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 its prevention.

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 and took her hands in his and pressed them against his heart. The pounding of 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 have cleared the situation, would have told himself or her what was in that pounding heart of his—for to save his life he did not know.

And Tharon frowned in the darkness and drew her hands from under those pressing ones.

"Mr. Kenset," she said steadily, "you're always tryin' to make me weak, to break me down with words an' looks an' touches. These hands o' yours,—damn 'em, they do make me weak! Don't put 'em on me again!"

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 hundred dollars and a letter, unpostmarked but sealed with tape and wax. Drake, who owned some half-breed Ironwoods, rode the best one down the Wall.

Kenset had cautioned him not to talk before he left—he feared Drake's propensity for speech. But he was the only man in Lost Valley whom he felt he could approach.

With the courier's departure he rode back to the Holding and told Tharon and Conford what he had done.

"These men are the best to be had," he said, "and they will go anywhere 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 like this? 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 set himself to wait in patience for the return of Drake.

* * * * *

But in Lost Valley a leaven was rising. It had begun insidiously to work with the appearance of Kenset in Tharon's band at Courtrey's doorstep. It burst up like a mushroom with a chance remark made by Lola of the Golden Cloud—Lola, who had seen, since that night in spring when Tharon Last stood in the door and promised to "get" her father's killer, that Courtrey was slipping from her. A woman like Lola is hard to deceive.

Much experience had taught her to feel the change of winds in the matter of allegiance.

She knew that surely and swiftly this man had gone down the path of unreasoning love, that he would give anything he possessed, do anything possible, to win for himself this slim mistress of Last's Holding.

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 eyes watching covertly his careless face, "the Last girl is lost to every Valley man. Sooner or later she'll leave the country, mark my word, with this Forest Service fellow, for she's in love with him, though she doesn't know it yet."

With a slow movement Courtrey loosed his arm about Lola and lifted her from 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 of her 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's apartment for a pleasant chat, as was his habit whenever he rode in from 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' first time I stopped holdin' her hands." He laughed at the picture he had conjured, then went on.

"An' so I feel grateful to you, old girl, for that remark. It sets me thinkin'." And he stooped and kissed her on the lips. The woman returned the kiss, a wonderful caress, slow, soft, alluring, but the man did not notice.

His face was flushed, his eyes studying.

Then he swung quickly out through the Golden, Cloud, and Lola slipped limply 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 henchmen left 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 man who was known as Arizona, and the four of them went out on the levels for a secret talk.

The next day the master of the Stronghold rode away on Bolt. As he left, Ellen, standing in the doorway like a pale ghost, lifted her tragic 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 could a-heard, Buck, dear! Nothin' in this world! I ben true to you as your shadow!"

Every soul within hearing knew the words for the utter and absolute truth, yet Courtrey looked at Wylackie Bob, at Arizona, and laughed.

"Like hell, you have!" he said, struck the Ironwood and was gone around 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 long studying glance at Wylackie and Arizona. He jerked the cinch so savagely 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 and important, came to the Stronghold and served on Ellen a summons in suit for divorce.

She met him at the door and invited him in, timidly and shyly, but he stood on the stone and made known his business.

At first she did not understand, was like a child told something too deep for its intellect to grasp, bewildered.

Then, when Service made it brutally plain, she slipped down along the doorpost like a wilted lily and lay long and white on the sand-scrubbed floor. Her women, loving her desperately, gathered her up and shut the door in the sheriff's face.

They sent for Cleve, and not even the presence of Black Bart in the near corral could keep the brother from running into the darkened room where Ellen lay, too stunned to rally.

"Damn him!" he gritted, falling on his knees beside her, "this's what's come of it! I ben lookin' for something of its like. Let him go. We'll leave Lost Valley, Ellen. We'll go out an' start another life, begin all over again. We're both too young to be floored by a man 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," she whispered. "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't want to stay at th' Stronghold after this?"

"Rather stay here under Buck's feet like th' poorest of his dogs than be well-off somewheres where I couldn't never see him again, never look 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 it takes all th' law in th' United States to keep you here. I'll file your answer tomorrow—protest to th' last word!"

And he rode into Corvan, only to find that Courtrey and Courtrey's influence had been there before him, that a cold sense of disaster seemed 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 some secret conclave.

Courtrey was playing his game with a daring hand, true to his name and habit.

Dusk was falling in Lost Valley. The long blue shadows had swept out from the Rockface, covering first the homesteads under the Wall, then the great grazing stretches, then Corvan, then the open levels again, then the mouth of Black Coulee and lastly sweeping eastward to hush the life at Last's Holding in that soft, sweet quiet which comes with the day's work done.

Out at the corrals Billy and Conford, Jack and Bent and Curly, put the finishing touches to the routine of precaution which the Holding never relaxed, day or night.

Inside the dusky living room where the bright blankets glowed on the walls and the ollas hung in the deep window places, Tharon Last sat at the little old melodeon and played her nameless tunes. She did not look at the yellowed keys. Instead her blue eyes, deep and glowing, wandered down along the southern slopes and she was lost in unconscious dreams. Once again she saw the trim figure of the forest man as she had seen him come stiffly into her range of vision that day in Corvan. She recalled his quiet eyes, dark and speaking, the odd way his hair went straight back from his forehead. She wondered why she should think of him at all.

He was against her—was a force that played directly against all her plans of life, her precepts. Moreover, she had told him she feared he was soft—like a woman—some women—that there was in him a lack of the straight man-courage which was the only standard in Lost Valley.

And yet—she waited on his word, somehow—held her hand from her sworn duty for a while, waiting—for what?

Ah, she knew! Deep in the soul of her she knew, vaguely and dimly to be sure, but she knew that it was for the time when the die should be cast—that he might prove himself for what he was.

For some vague reason she knew she would not kill Courtrey until this man stood by.

She wondered what Courtrey meant by this strange quiet following the tragic moment at the Stronghold steps when the Vigilantes had challenged him and ridden away.

And then, all suddenly, into her dreaming there came the sound of a horse's hoofs on the sounding-board without—slow hoofs, uncertain. For one swift second that sound, coming out of the dusk with its uncertainty, sent a chill of memory down her nerves. So had come El Rey 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 loomed along the green stretch, came plodding up to stop and stand before her, a brown horse, with the stirrups of his saddle hung on the pommel, his rein tied short up—Captain, the good, common friend of Kenset—of the—foothills!

Tharon felt the blood pour back upon her heart and stay there for an awful moment. She put up a hand and touched her throat, and to save her life she did not know why this sudden sickening fear should come upon her.

She had seen men killed, had known tragedy and loss and heartache, but never before had she seen the crest of the distant Wall to dance upon the pale skyline so. Then she whirled into the house and her young voice pealed out a call—Billy, Conford, Bent—she drew them to her running through the deep house—to point to the silent messenger and question them with wide blue eyes where fear rose up like a living thing.

Billy at her shoulder, looked not at Captain, but at her.

A sigh lifted his breast, but he stifled it at birth and turned with the others back toward the corrals. Tharon, running toward the deep room where the Virgin stood in Her everlasting beauty, unfastened her soft white dress as she ran. Inside she flung herself on her knees before the Holy Mother and poured out a trembling prayer.

"Not that! Oh, Mary, not that! Let it not be that!" she whispered thickly. Then she was up, into her riding clothes—was out where the boys were hurriedly saddling the Finger Marks. Presently she was on El Rey and shooting like a silver shaft in the summer dusk down along the green levels toward the east. They rode in silence, Conford, Bent, Jack, Curly, Billy and herself, and a thousand thoughts were boiling miserably in two hearts.

El Rey, Golden, Redbuck, Drumfire, Westwind and Sweetheart, they went down along the sounding dark plain, a magnificent band. The whole earth seemed to resound to the thunder of their going, and for once in their lives her beauties could not run fast enough for the mistress of Last'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 into the night, the standing willows by the Silver Hollow. The sloping stretches began to lift, dotted by the oaks and digger-pines for whose sake Kenset had come to Lost Valley. They shot through them, up along the sharply lifting skirts of the hills, in between the guarding pines that formed the gateway to the little glade where the singing stream went 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 seemed to 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 of the little red cow which served the forest man with milk.

They pounded to a sliding stop in the cabin's yard and Conford called sharply into the silent darkness.

"Kenset! Hello—Kenset!"

Tharon held her breath and listened. There was no sound except a night bird calling from the highest pine-tip.

Carefully the men dismounted.

"You stay up, Tharon, dear," the foreman said quietly, "until we look around."

But to save her life the girl could not. What was this trembling that seized her limbs? Why did the stars, come out on the purple sky, shift so strangely to her eyes? She slipped off El Rey and stood by his shoulder waiting. Conford struck a flare and lit a candle, holding it carefully before him, shielding it with his palm behind it to throw the gleam away from his face, into the cabin. The pale light illumined the whole interior, and it was empty. The keen eyes of the riders went over every inch of space before they entered—along the walls, in the bed, under the tables. Then they filed in and Tharon followed, gazing around with eyes that ached behind their lids. There on the northern wall between the windows, was the great spread of the beautiful picture she had helped the forest man to hang. There were his books on the table's edge. She looked twice—the last one on the pile at a certain corner was just as she had placed it there, a trifle crooked with the edge, but neatly in line with those beneath it. There was the big chair in which she had waited while he made the little meal—there was his desk in the ingle nook, his maps upon it. It was all so familiar, so filled with his personality, that Tharon felt the very power 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 was drying—blood, some three days old.

Then, indeed, did the universe sag and darken to the Mistress of Last's.

She put out a hand to steady herself and found it grasped in the strong 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 which felt dry as ashes. The same ache that had come with Jim Last's final smile was already in her heart, but intensified a thousand times. She felt 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 shut out the sun, moon and stars with its sinister darkness. She felt a nausea at the pit of her stomach, a need for air in her cramped lungs.

Strange, she had never known that one could be so detached from all familiar things, could seem so lost in a sea of stupid agony. Why was it so? If this dark blot of blood had come from the veins of Billy now, of Conford, or Jack or Curly, her own men, would she have lost her grip like this? And then she became dully conscious that Billy had put her in the big chair by the table and had joined the others in their exhaustive search for any clew to the tragedy. She saw the moon rising over the tops of the pine trees at the glade's edge, heard the little song of the running stream.

That was the little stream that Kenset had looked for in his ideal spot, this was the home he had made for himself, these were the things of the other life he had known, these soft, dark pictures, the books on 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 staring miserably out of the open door, scarcely conscious of the scattered voices of her men, searching, searching, hunting, in widening circles outside.... Then they came back talking in low voices and she roused herself desperately. Her limbs were stiff when she rose from the big chair, 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 all evidence. 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 time in her life!—to mount a horse. She went up on El Rey as if she were old. Then they were riding down the smooth floor of the little glade, leaving that darkened cabin at its head to stand in tragic loneliness.

She saw the tops of the guarding pines at the gateway, rode out between them. The moon was up in majesty, and by its light Jack Masters suddenly leaned down to look at something, pulled up, swept down 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-coloured shield which had shone on Kenset's breast!

Its double-tongued fastener was twisted far awry, as if it had been wrenched away by violence.

Conford turned and looked back to the cabin, as if he measured the distance.

"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 they rode up along the sounding-board and put in at Last's. Billy reached up tender arms and took Tharon off El Rey, and for the first time she gave 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 Last stumbled forward and sank in a heap at Her feet, her arms about the statue's knees.

"Hail—Mary—intercede for—him—" she faltered, and then the shining Virgin, the dim mystery of the shadowy room, faded out to leave her for the first time in her strong life, a bit of senseless clay.

When she again opened her eyes the little winds of day were fanning her cheeks and old Anita was tugging at her shoulders, voluble with fright.

To the riders of Last's the tragedy was nothing more than any other that they had known in Lost Valley. They went about their work as usual.

Only Billy was filled with a sickening anguish at the knowledge that he was not able to offer one smallest saving straw to the girl in the big house—for Billy knew.

All day Tharon sat like a rock in her own room, staring with unseeing eyes at the blank whitewashed walls. She did not yet know what ailed her, why this killing, more than that of poor Harkness, should make her sick to her soul's foundations. Yet it was so. Even the thought of her sworn duty was vague before her for a time. Then it seemed to come forward out of the mass of fleeting memories—Kenset that day at Baston's steps shapely, trim, halted—Kenset laughing over the little meal beside the table where the books lay—Kenset grasping her shoulder when she whirled to mount El Rey and challenge the Stronghold single-handed—to come forward like a calming, steadying thing and turn the pain to purpose.