There was no one now to hold her back, no vital hands to press hers upon a beating heart, to make her untrue to her given word!

Now she could go out, reckless and grim in her utter disregard of the outcome, and kill Courtrey where he stood. The time had come. There should be another cross in the granite beneath the pointing pine.

As if the whirling universe settled back to its ordered place the right proportion came back to her vision, the breath seemed to lighten her holden lungs.

Once again the girl arose and steadied herself, smoothed her tawny hair, looked at her hands to find them free from the shaking that had weakened them.

She dressed herself and went out among her people, quiet and pale.

The twilight had fallen and all the western part of the Valley was blue with shadow. Only on Kenset's foothills was the rosy light glowing, a tragic, aching light, it seemed to her. She saw all the little world of Lost Valley with new eyes, sombre eyes, in which there was no sense of its beauty. She wondered anxiously how soon she could meet Courtrey, and where. And then with the suddenness of an ordered play, the question was answered for her, for out of the dusk and the purple shadows a Pomo rider came on a running pony and halted out a stone's throw, calling for the "Senorita," his hands held up in token of friendliness.

Without a thought of treachery Tharon went out to him and took the letter he handed her—swinging around for flight as the paper left his hand, for the riders of Last's were known all up and down the land. This dusky messenger took no chances he could avoid. He was well down along the slope by the time the boys came clanking around the house.

And Tharon, standing in the twilight like a slim white ghost, was staring over their heads, her lips ashen, the scrawled letter trembling in her hands. For this is what she read, straining her young eyes in the fading light.

"Tharon. You must know by now that I mean bisness. All this Vigilant bisness ain't a-goin' to help things eny. If it hadn't of ben that I love you, what you think I'd a-done to that bunch? That's th' truth. I ben holdin' off thinkin' you'd come to your senses an' see that Buck Courtrey ain't to be met with vilence. Now I'm playin' my trump card—now, tonight.

"Lola says you love this dude from below. That don't cut no ice with me. I ain't carin' for no love from you at present. All I want is you. I can make you love me once I've got you safe at th' Stronghold. I ain't never failed with no woman yet. An' I mean to have you, fair means or foul.

"Rather have you fair. So here's my last word.

"This Kenset ain't dead—yet. I went and took him. I've got him safe as hell in the Canon Country. Ain't no man in th' Valley can find God's Cup but me. He's guarded an' there's a lookout on th' peak above th' Cup that can see a signal fire at th' Stronghold. One fire out by my big corral means 'Send him out by False Ridge with ten days' grub.' Two fires means 'Put a true bullet in his head an' leave him there.' Now, here's the word. I've got a case fixed up to divorce Ellen, legal. If you'll marry me soon's I'm free, I'll build one fire out by that corral.

"If you say yes, you build one fire out by th' cottonwoods to th' left of the Holdin'. I'm watchin' an' will see it at once. You can see for yourself I mean bisness, as if you'll watch too, you'll see that one fire here.

COURTREY."

For a long moment the Mistress of Last's stood in profound quiet, as if she could not move. She was held in a trance like those dreadful night-dreams when one is locked in deadly inertia, helpless. The net which had been weaving in Courtrey's fertile brain was finished, flung, and closing in upon her before she knew of its existence. An awe of his cleverness, his trickery, gripped her in a clutch of ice. The whole fabric of her own desires and plans and purposes seemed to crumple like the white ash in a dead fire, leaving her nothing. She had been out-witted instead of outfought. One more evidence of the man's baseness, his unscrupulous cunning.

He played his trump card and it was a winner, sweeping the table—for she knew before she finished that difficult reading that she would do anything in all the world to stop that "true bullet" in the heart that had pounded beneath her open palms.... Knew she would break her given word to Jim Last—knew she would forsake the Holding—that she would crawl to Courtrey's feet and kiss his hand, if only he would spare Kenset of the foothills, would send him out to that vague world of below, never to return!

She swayed drunkenly on her feet for a time that seemed ages long. Then life came back in her with a rush. She broke the nightmare dream and gasped out a broken command to her faithful ones.

"Billy!" she said thickly, "Oh, Billy! If you love me, run! Run an' build a fire—one fire!—only one fire, Billy, dear—out by th' cottonwoods to th' left—of th' Holdin'!"

Then she went and sat limply down on the step at the western door, leaned her head against the deep adobe wall, and fell to weeping as if the very heart in her would wash itself away in tears.

And Billy, numb with anguish but true to the love he bore her, went swiftly out and set that beacon glowing. Its red light flaring against the blue darkness of the falling night seemed like a bodeful omen of sorrow and disaster, of death and failure and despair.

Tharon on the sill roused herself to watch it leap and glow, then turned her deep eyes to where she knew the Stronghold lay.

Presently out upon the distant black curtain of the night there flared that other fire, signal of life to Kenset somewhere in the Canon Country—and then her lips drew into a thin hard line and she straightened her young form stiffly up, put a hand hard upon her breast.

"A little time, Courtrey!" she whispered to herself, "Jus' a little time an' luck, an' I'll give you th' double-cross or die, damn your soul to hell!"

Billy, coming softly in along the adobe wall, caught the whisper, felt rather than heard its meaning, and turned back with the step of a cat.

* * * * *

An hour later, when all the Holding was quiet for the night, drifting to early rest after the day's hard work, the Mistress of Last's, booted, dressed in riding clothes, her fair head covered by a sombrero, her daddy's guns at her hips, crept softly to the gate of El Rey's own corral. She went like a thief, crouching, watching, without a sound, and saddled the big stallion in careful softness. She led him gently out and around toward the cottonwoods, away from the house. When she was well away she put foot to stirrup and went up as the king leaped for his accustomed flight.

But Tharon pulled him down. She wanted no thunder on the sounding-board tonight. But soft as she had been, as careful, there was one at the Holding who followed her every act, who went for a horse, too, who saddled Drumfire in silence and who crept down the sounding-board—Billy the faithful. Far down along the plain toward the Black Coulee he let the red roan out, so that the girl, keen of hearing as of sight, caught the following beat of hoofs, stopped, listened, understood and reined El Rey up to wait.

And soon out of the shadows cast by the eastern ramparts, where the moon was rising, she saw the rider coming. A quick mist of tears suffused her eyes, a sick feeling gripped her heart.

Here was another mixed in the sorry tangle! She had always known vaguely that Billy was one with her, that his heart was the deep heart of her friend.

He was the one she always wanted near her in times of stress, it was with him she liked to ride in the Big Shadow when the sun went down behind the Canon Country.

But now she did not want him. She had a keen desire to see him safely out of this—this which was to be the end, one way or the other, of the blood-feud between the Stronghold and Last's.

Now as he loped up and stopped abreast of her in silence, she reached out a hand and caught his in a close clasp.

"I don't want you, Billy, dear," she said miserably, "not because I don't love you, but because I ain't a-goin' to see you shot by Courtrey's gang. This is one time, boy, when I want you to leave me alone, to go back without me."

The rider shook his head against the stars.

"Couldn't do it, little girl," he said wistfully, "you know I couldn't do it."

"Ain't I your mistress, Billy?" asked Tharon sternly. "Ain't I your boss?"

"Sure are," said the boy with conviction.

"Ain't I always been a good boss to you?"

"Best in th' world. Good as Jim Last."

"Then," said Tharon sharply, "it's up to you to take my orders. I order you now—go back."

The cowboy leaned down suddenly and kissed the hand he held.

"I'm at your shoulder, Tharon, dear," he said with simple dignity, "like your shadow. At your foot like the dogs that never forsake th' herds. I couldn't go back an' leave you—not though I died for it tonight.

"We'll say no more about it. I don't know where you're goin', but wherever it is, there I'm goin', too, an' on my way. You can tell me or not, just as you please, but let's go."

For a long time Tharon Last sat in the starlight and watched the crests of the distant mountains fringed with the silver of the moon that was rising behind them, and her throat ached with tears. All these things that hurt her, these unknown, tangled things that she knew dimly meant Life, had come to her with the advent of Kenset in Lost Valley. She wished passionately for a fleeting moment that he had never come, that the old swinging, rushing life of the ranges had never known his holding influence. Then she felt again the hammering of his heart beneath her palms, and nothing mattered in all the world beside.

It was a thing beyond her ken, something ordered by fate. She must go on, blindly as running waters, regardless of all that drowned.

But she loosed her hand from Billy's, leaned to his shoulder, put her arm about his neck and drew his face to hers. Softly, tenderly, she kissed him upon the lips, and she did not know that that was the cruelest thing she had ever done in all her kindly life, did not see the deathly pallor that overspread his face.

"I'm goin' to th' Canon Country, Billy," she said simply, "to find th' Cup o' God an' Kenset."

Then she straightened in her saddle and gave El Rey the rein.

* * * * *

It was two of the clock by the starry heavens when these two riders entered the blind opening in the Rockface and disappeared. El Rey, the mighty, tossed his great head and whistled, stamped his hoofs in the dead sift of the silencing floor. He had never before lost sight of the sky, never felt other breath in his nostrils than the keen plain's wind.

Now he shook himself and halted, went on again, and again halted, to be urged forward by Tharon's spurred heels in his flanks. Up through the eerie pass they went without speech, for each heart was filled to overflowing with thoughts and fears.

To Billy there was something fateful, bodeful in the dead darkness, the stillness. It seemed to him as if he left forever behind him the open life of the ranges, the gay and careless days of riding after Tharon's cattle.

For five years he had lived at Last's, under master and mistress, content, happy. The half-remembered world of below had never called him. The light on the table under the swinging lamp with Tharon's face therein, the murmur of the stream through her garden, the whisper of the cottonwoods, these had been sufficient. He had, subconsciously, thanked his Maker for these things, had served them with a whole heart. They had been his all, his life. Now the cottonwoods seemed far away, remote, the life of the deep ranch house a thing of long ago. All these things had given way to something that sapped the sunlight from the air, the very blueness from the vaulted skies, something that had come with the quiet man of the pine-tree badge. So Billy sighed in the darkness and sat easily on Drumfire, his slim left hand fidgeting with the swinging rein.

And Tharon was lost, too, in a maze of thoughts. She sat straight as a lance, tense, alive, keen, staring into the narrow bore of the high ceiled cut, thinking feverishly. Was Kenset really alive? Had Courtrey been square with her? Or was he even now lying stiff and stark somewhere in the high cuts, his dark eyes dull with death, that beating heart forever stilled? She caught her breath with a whistling sigh, felt her head swim at the picture. If he was—if—he—was—! She fingered the big guns at her hip and savagery took hold of her. Courtrey's left wrist to match his right. Then some pretty work about him to make him wait—then a shot through his stomach—he would spit blood and reel, but he wouldn't die—the butcher!—for a little while, and she would taunt him with Harkness—and Jim. Last shot in the back—with Old Pete—and with—with Kenset—the one man—Oh, the one man in all the world whose quiet smile was unforgettable, whose vital hands were upon hers now, like ghost-hands, would always be upon hers if she lived to be old like Anita or died at dawn today! And Kenset had counseled her to peace! To keep the stain of blood from her own hands! She laughed aloud, suddenly, a ghastly sound that made cold chills go down her rider's spine, for it was the mad laughter of the blood-lust! Billy knew that Jim Last in his best moments was never so coldly a killer as his daughter was tonight.

So they traversed the roofed cut and came out into the starlight of the first canyon. Up this they went in single file. They passed the place where Albright had found the dark spray on the canyon wall, the standing rock where the gun with the untrue firing pin had kicked away its shell. A little farther on was the disturbed and trampled heap of slide which had held Old Pete's body. In silence they rode on, the horses' hoofs striking a million echoes from the reverberating crosscuts.

The moon was shining above, but here there was only a sifted light, a ghostly radiance of starlight and painted walls. Tharon, riding ahead, went unerringly forward as if she traveled the open ways of the Valley floor. She turned from the main canyon toward the left and passed the mouth of Old Pete's snow-bed. Between this and that standing spire and pinnacle she went, with a strong certainty that presently stirred Billy to speech.

"Tharon, dear," he said gently, "hadn't we better leave a mark or two along this-a-way? Ain't you got no landmarks?"

"Can if you want," the girl said briefly, "I don't need landmarks."

"Then how you know the way? There ain't no one knows th' Canon Country—but Courtrey."

"I don't know it," she said simply but with profound conviction. "I'm feelin' it, Billy. I know I'm goin' straight to th' Cup o' God. I'm blind as a bat, it seems, yet goin' straight."

She lifted a hand and crossed herself.

"Goin' straight—Mary willin'—an' I'll come back straight. It lies up there an' to th' left again." She made a wide gesture that swept up and out, embracing the towering walls, the half-seen peaks against the stars.

Billy shut his lips and said no more.

Up there lay False Ridge, the sinister, dropping spine that came down from the uplands outside where the real great world began, and lured those who traveled down it to crumbling precipice and yawning pit, to sliding slope and slant that, once ridden down, could never be scaled again, according to the weird stories that were told of it.

But if Tharon went to the Canons, there lay his trail, too. If she went down False Ridge to death in the pits and waterless cuts, he asked no better lot than to follow—the faithful dog at her foot, the shadow at her shoulder.

And so it was that dawn crept up the blue-velvet of the night sky and sent its steel-blue light deep in the painted splits, and they rode unerringly forward up the sounding passes.

When the light increased enough to show the way they came abruptly to the spot where it was necessary to leave the horses. The floor of the canyon up which they were traveling lifted sharply in one huge step, breast-high to a man.

Tharon in the lead halted and looked for a moment all up and down the wondrous maze of pale, tall openings that encompassed them all round.

She turned in her saddle and looked back the way they had come. There was darker shadow, going downward, but here and there those pale mouths gaped, long ribbons of space dropping from the heights above down to their level.

Up any one a man might turn and lose himself completely, for they in turn were cut and ribboned with other mouths, leaving spires and walls and faces a thousand-fold on every hand.

Tharon, even in the tensity and preoccupation of the hour, drew in her breath and the pupils of her blue eyes spread.

"Th' Canon Country!" she said softly, "I always knew it would be like this—too great to tell about! I knew it would hold somethin' for me—always knew it—either life an' its best—or death."

There was a simple grandeur about the earnest words, and Billy, his face grey in the steely light, felt the heart in his breast thrill with their portent.

No matter what the Canons held for her—either that glorious fulfillment of life, or the simple austerity of death—he would have a part in it, would have served her to the last, true to the love he bore her, true to himself.

And nothing—nothing under God's heaven, save death itself—could ever wipe out the memory of that kiss, given from the depths of her loving heart, the sign-manuel of her undying affection and friendship, the one and only touch of her inviolate red lips that he had ever known the Mistress of Last's to give to any man, save Jim Last himself.

He wiped a hand across his forehead, damp with more than the night cold, and dismounted.

"We'll leave th' horses here," he said. "I've an extra rope to string across an' make a small corral."

He did not add that he would fasten this slim barrier lightly, so that a horse that really wanted to break out—in the frantic madness of thirst, say,—might do so.

Then he set about his task—but Tharon stood with strained eyes looking up—and up—and ever up to the dimly appearing, looming spine of False Ridge.

Over there, she knew in her heart, lay the hidden Cup o' God, with its secret, the secret that meant all the world to her.



CHAPTER X

THE UNTRUE FIRING PIN

Tharon turned back and looked long at El Rey. She wondered if she would ever see the great silver-blue stallion again, ever feel the wind singing by her cheeks, ever hear the thunder of his running on the hollow ranges. She saw the stain of Jim Last's blood on the big studded saddle and a pain like death stabbed her.

"I'll get him," she had promised on that tragic day, "so help me God!" and had made the sign of the Cross.

What did she now?

Cast away all certainty of that fulfilment because a man—a man almost a stranger—lay somewhere in the Canon Country, crawled somewhere along False Ridge, perhaps, wounded and sick with fever.

"Oh, hurry!" she whispered as Billy made secure his last light knot in the rope gateway across the cut and came to join her.

She scrambled up the bench in the canyon floor, gained her feet and went forward at a rush.

"Steady, Tharon," warned the rider, "you ain't used to climbin'. Save your wind."

It was true advice. Long before the sun was high overhead and day was broad in the painted cracks she had begun to heed it. As she swung up the ever lifting floors, threaded this way and that between the thin intercepting walls that towered hundreds of feet straight up, she cast her wide eyes up in wonder. Always she had watched the Canon Country from her western door, always it had held her with a binding lure.

There was that about its mystery, its austere majesty, that had thrilled her heart from babyhood. She had pictured it a thousand times and always it had looked just so—pink and grey and saffron, pale and misty with light when the sun was high, blue and wonderful and black as the luminary lowered, leaving the quick shadows.

Hour after hour they climbed, mostly in silence, speaking now and then some necessary word of caution, of assent. This way and that Tharon turned, but always moving upward in the same direction. From time to time Billy dropped a shred of the red kerchief about his neck, touched the soft walls with the handle of the knife he carried. This left a mark plain as a trail to his trained eyes.

At noon they halted for a little rest. From Tharon's saddle Billy had taken the flask of water, the tightly rolled bundle of bread and meat in its meal-sack. They ate sparingly of this, drank more sparingly of the water. Billy wondered miserably how soon this last might become more precious than fine gold to him, as he thought of the waterless pockets of the blind and sliding country.

Long before she had rested sufficiently Tharon was up and ready to go. Ever her eager eyes were on the heights above. Ever they turned to the left of the steady line she set herself through and above the winding passes. From time to time Billy looked back. There was not a sign by which one might tell which way he had come if the last mark he made was around the first corner. Hundreds and thousands of spires and faces towered about them. It was a mystic maze of dead stone, cut and weathered by the elements.

"No wonder!" he told himself, "that the Indians call it the Enchanted Land!"

"We'll reach False Ridge tomorrow, Billy," Tharon told him confidently, "an' over it lies God's Cup. There's water there—an' Kenset."

"What makes you think so?"

"I don't know. Just feel. He's there—alive or—" a half sob clutched at her voice—"or dead. But he's there."

"There'll be some one with him if he's alive, most likely."

"Sure," said Tharon briefly.

All the afternoon they traveled, sometimes touching with outstretched hands the faces on either side of them, again walking upward through majestic halls, solemn and beautiful. Everything about them was beautiful, the height, the sheer, straight walls, the myriad little blue shadows of tiny projections on their faces. Night came so early in the pits that long before they wished they were compelled to camp. In a blind pocket, walled like a room and round as an apple, they stopped, and Billy spread down the blanket he had taken from Drumfire's back. This was their only preparation. They had nothing to do, no fire to build, no water to bring.

Tharon, scarcely conscious of the many miles she had traveled since the previous night, sat down upon the blanket, gathered her knees in her arms and stared at the vague blue phantoms of cliffs through the tall straight mouth that led into this sheltered pocket.

Outside the winds were drawing up the canyons. All day they had walked in this wind. It drew constantly up and down the cuts, this way and that, like contrary currents that met and fought each other, swung in together, went a little way in peace, to again split and surge away through other channels. The echoes were alive with every sound, both of their own making and that of the wind's. A constant sighing droned through the depths, a mournful, whispering sound that sent the shivers down Tharon's spine, made her think sadly of all the tragedies she had ever known.

Billy, lying full length beside her, his hands beneath his head, looked up to the narrow blue spot of sky so far away, and thought his own thoughts, and they were not wholly sad.

They fell to talking, softly, in low tones, as if in all the mysterious solitude there might be one to hear, and it was mostly speech of long ago—when Billy had first come into Lost Valley.

After a long and quiet hour the man insisted that she should sleep—that after the hard day and in view of the coming hard morrow, she needed rest.

"But I'm not tired, Billy," Tharon protested, "no more'n as if I'd been ridin' all day after th' cattle."

But Billy shook his head and hollowed a little place in the soft slide stuff at the Wall's foot. In this he spread the blanket, folding it half back.

"Lie down," he commanded, "an' you'll be asleep so quick you won't know when it happens."

Tharon slipped off her daddy's belt and stretched her slim young form in the hollow, which fitted it like a cradle. Not for nothing had Billy slept out many a night with nothing save the earth and stars for bed and blanket. The hollow was craftily deepened at hip and shoulder, making a restful couch. As she settled herself therein he lapped the loose half of the blanket over her and tucked it in. Then he took his hat, folded it sharply and placed it under the tawny head.

In its place he would fain have laid his heart.

His fingers, settling the improvised pillow, tangled themselves wistfully in the sun-bright hair, and the boy groaned aloud.

"What's the matter, Billy, dear?" asked Tharon anxiously, but Billy laughed lightly, a thin sound in the mighty caverns.

"Nothing in God's world, Tharon," he lied. "Now go to sleep."

And he walked away to the tall mouth and sat down with his back against one of the walls. From his pocket he took papers and tobacco and proceeded to roll himself a cigarette.... Dawn showed the narrow doorway strewn with their butts, as leaves strew mountain trails in autumn.

* * * * *

Things were ready to happen in Lost Valley—several things.

At the Golden Cloud, Lola looked across the level stretches toward the Stronghold with tragic dark eyes, and smiled at a dozen men whom she scarcely saw. Settlers from all up and down the Wall drifted into Corvan and out again, intent, silent, watchful. Vaqueros and riders from the Stronghold also came and went, as intent, as silent. They passed each other with hostile eyes and trigger fingers were unusually limber. The air was pregnant with change.

Buck Courtrey was conspicuous by his absence.

He was not seen in the town, neither was he at the Stronghold.

There were soft whispers afloat that he was with the Pomos up under the Rockface at the north.

And at the Stronghold, poor Ellen, whiter than ever, more like a broken lily drooping on its stem, trembled and waited for a day that was set soon—too terribly soon!—the day, farcically appointed, for the suit for divorce against her.

Word of this was abroad through all the Valley. Underground speculation was rife as to which of the two women whom Courtrey favoured, Lola or Tharon, was responsible. Some said one, some the other. But Lola knew.

Then came the day itself—a golden summer day as sweet and bright as that one years ago when Courtrey had married Ellen—at this same pine building where the laughable legal farces were enacted now.

Pale as a new moon Ellen rode in across the rolling stretches on one of the Ironwoods, with Cleve beside her. She was spiritless, silent. Cleve was silent, too, though for a far different reason. There was a frown between his brows, a glitter in his narrowed eyes. He was thinking of the only man in Corvan whom he had been able to persuade to present Ellen's protest—Dick Burtree, one-time lawyer and man of parts in the outside, now a puffed and threadbare vagabond, whose paramount idea was whiskey and more whiskey. But Burtree could talk. Over his mottled and shapeless lips could, on occasion, pour a stream of pure oratory silver as the Vestal's Veil.

When he was drunk he feared neither man nor devil, and he could speak best so. Therefore Cleve had given him enough money in advance to put him in trim.

"What you think Buck'll say about me, Cleve?" Ellen asked anxiously. "What's he mean to accuse me of?"

"Any dirty thing he can trump up, Sis," said Cleve gravely, "he's a-goin' to make it a nasty mess—an' I wish to God you'd jest ride on down th' Wall with me an' never even look back."

He leaned from his saddle and took the blue-veined hand in his. There was an unspeakable tenderness in his eyes as he regarded his sister. "What you say, Ellen? There's life below, an' work an' other men. You'll marry again, sometime——"

But Ellen shook her head with its maize-gold crown.

"Nary other man, Cleve," she said gently. "I'm all Buck's woman."

So they rode on toward the town, and Cleve knew that his last faint hope was dead.

In the town itself there was a stir. Courtrey was there, and Wylackie Bob, and Black Bart and Arizona, a bunch of dark, evil men in all surety.

The Ironwoods were in evidence everywhere, but strange to say, there were no Finger Marks. Not a man from the Holding was in town.

When Cleve and Ellen, alone together, rode in, it lacked yet a half hour of the time set for trial. There was no place to go but Baston's, so they dismounted at the hitch-rack. Ellen, swaying on her feet, looked all around with her big pale eyes, and when she saw Courtrey some distance away she put a hand to her heart as simply as a hurt child. She was a pitiful creature in her long white dress, for she had ridden in on an old sidesaddle, and she shook out the crumpled folds in a wistful attempt to look proper. On her head was the inevitable sunbonnet of slats and calico.

As she went up the steps of the store with Cleve, Lola of the Golden Cloud, blazing like a comet in her red-and-black came face to face with her purposely. What was in Lola's head none would ever know, but she wanted to see Courtrey's wife.

As they met they stopped dead still, these two women who loved one man, and the look that passed between them was electric, deep, revealing. They stood so long staring into each other's eyes that Cleve, frowning, plucked Ellen by the sleeve and made to push forward.

But as suddenly as a flash of light Lola reached out her two hands and caught Ellen's in a tight clasp that only women know, the swift, clinging clasp of the secret fellowship of those who suffer.

For one tense moment she held them, while Ellen swayed forward for all the world as if she would sink in upon the deep full breast of this wanton whom she had hated! Then the spell broke, they fell apart with a rush, Lola swung out and went down the steps, while Ellen obediently followed Cleve into Baston's store, where she sat on a nail keg and waited in a dull lethargy. Outside Courtrey, who had witnessed the thing from across the street, slapped his thigh and laughed uproariously.

It was a funny sight to him. But Lola's beautiful black eyes blazed across at him with a light that none had ever seen before in their inscrutable depths.

Then the hour struck, and all Corvan, it seemed to Cleve, strung out toward the Court House. This was to be in open court—a spectacle. From somewhere in the adobe outskirts of the town came Ellen's serving women, most of them, whom Cleve had sent in early in the day. They fell in with her and so, with only the brother who had never failed her and these dusky women of the silent tongues to back her, Ellen Courtrey went to her crucifixion as truly as though she had been one of the two thieves on Golgotha.

At the sight of Courtrey across the big bare room she went whiter than she was, if such a thing were possible, and slid weakly into the chair placed for her.

Then the thing proceeded—swiftly, lightly, with smiles on the faces of the crowd.

Old Ben Garland on the judge's bench, was furtive, scared, nervous, fiddling with his papers and clearing his throat from time to time.

The county clerk at his table made a great deal out of the ceremony of swearing in the witnesses—Wylackie Bob, Black Bart, Arizona and one young Wylackie Indian woman who worked at the Stronghold. Cleve put up only the serving women whom he had sent in, some seven of them, every one of whom loved their mistress with the faithful fidelity of a dog. These women knew Ellen Courtrey as not even the master of the Stronghold himself knew her. They knew her in her idle hours, at her small tasks, at her bedside, in the loving solicitude she displayed for all of them—and they knew her on her knees in prayer, for Ellen had a strange and simple religion, half Catholic and half Pomo paganism.

In the straight-backed chair they gave her Ellen sat like a statue, sweet and still, a thing so obviously good that it seemed even Courtrey himself must weaken to behold her. But not Courtrey. He was on fire with the vision of Tharon Last on the Cup Rim's floor, shaking her fist toward him in challenge—at Baston's steps calling him a murderer and worse—at her western door, striking him from her with the strength of a man. He saw the signal fire flaring across the darkened Valley—and nothing on earth or in Heaven could have softened him to the woman who bound him away from this fighting girl, this gun woman whom he was breaking to him slowly but surely. He visioned her in Ellen's room at the Stronghold—and the breath came fast in his throat.

And Ellen?

Ah, Ellen was thinking of the long past day when this man had found her in the barren rocklands and taken her with the high hand of a lover. She, too, drifted away from the chilling courtroom with its judge and its petty officials.... And then all suddenly she knew that men were talking—and about her. She heard the drone of question and answer—the rambling statements of the stranger, Arizona, accusing her of strange things—of asking him to take her on rides in Courtrey's absence—of swinging with him nights in the hammock by the watering trough!

She sat and listened with parted lips and large innocent eyes fixed on the man in wonder. Cleve Whitmore clenched his hands until the nails cut deep, but he held his tongue and controlled his face. Only the blazing blue eyes spoke. She knew that Black Bart tried to tell something, that he made some mistake or other and had to begin all over again. There was a long and tedious time in here when she looked away out the window to where the prairie grass was blowing in the little winds and the shadows of clouds drifted across the green expanse.... She was numb and far away with misery. She did not care for anything in all this world. It seemed as if she was detached, aloof, dead already in body as she was in soul.... And then she heard the drawling voice of Wylackie Bob—and he was saying something unspeakable—about her! She listened like one in a trance—then she struggled up from her chair with tragic long arms extended, and the cry that rang from her lips was piteous.

"Buck!" it pealed across the stillness of the crowded room, "Buck!—it ain't so! Never in this world, Buck! I ben true to you as your shadow! Before God, it ain't true!"

There was a stir throughout the crowd, a breath that was audible. There were many of the Vigilantes there—a goodly number, all wondering where Tharon Last was, where Kenset was, where were the riders from Last's. They had expected, what they did not know—something, at any rate, for this seemed somehow a test, a turning point. But there was nothing. They stirred and waited, like a great force heaving in its bed, blind, sluggish, but wakening.

And Ellen, chilled by Courtrey's sneering face, the cold disapproval of Ben Garland's striking mallet, sank back in her chair and covered her face with her shaking hands.... She heard some more awful things—then the voice of Dick Burtree beginning soft, low, silver like running waters. She heard it tell of that far away day of her marriage—of the years that followed—of Courtrey's love for her—of her own gentleness, her beauty, "like the tender sunlight of spring on the snow and the golden sands"—of her service, her loyalty, her love that had "never faltered nor intruded" that "patient obedience to her master had but strengthened and made perfect." Of the pitiful thing that her life had been this man made a wondrous thing, all sweet with twilights and haloed with service.

He talked until the courtroom was still as death and the Indian women behind her were rocking in unison of grief. Then she heard questions again and the gutteral soft voices of her women answering—with love and devotion in every halting word. Once again the crowd in the room stirred—and Courtrey's narrow eyes went over it in that cold, promising glance.

For once in his life Courtrey, the bully, felt a premonitory chill down his spine—because for the first time that promising glance of his failed of its effect! Only here and there along the rows of faces did one cower. There were faces, many faces, that looked back at him with steady eyes and tight lips.... Verily it was time he conquered the riding, shooting, beautiful she-devil who had made this thing possible! The sooner he got Tharon Last away from this bunch of spawn the better. Then he would sweep in with all his old swift methods, only sharper ones this time, and "clean" them all. When he got through it would be a different man's Valley, make no mistake about that!

Here Ellen looked straight into his eyes and both were conscious of the shock. Ellen wilted and Courtrey frowned and struck a fist against the railing near him.... He looked up and met the hesitating eyes of Ben Garland on the bench and his own hardened down to pin points.

The farce was finished save for the Judge's decision—Dick Burtree was slumped in his chair, dead drunk and asleep. Wylackie Bob was lighting a cigarette in his brown fingers, a smile on his evil mouth, his slow, black eyes covering the slim white form of Ellen in a speculative way, as if he dreamed of making true his blasphemous lies. Ellen was sweet as a flower in her open-lipped beauty, her panting despair. Wylackie did not notice the slim man beside her whose lips were so tight that they were a mere line across his face. No one at the Stronghold noticed Cleve much.

Then Ben Garland was speaking, and Ellen gathered her dim wits enough to make out that he was saying strange things—awful things—that had to do with Courtrey's freedom.

Then she knew—swaying and groping with her blue-veined hands—that the thing was done—that she was no longer a wife. That she would never again sleep in the bend of Courtrey's arm as she had slept in those golden days of long ago—that she was an outcast, blackened beyond all hope by the damning and unchoice words of Wylackie Bob.... Then the world faded out for Ellen in merciful blackness.

The petty officials rose with laughter and clanking of boots on the board floors—the crowd filed out in a striking silence. Never before had a crowd in Lost Valley gone out from a courtroom in that strange and bodeful silence.

The sight of Ellen lying white and limp across Cleve Whitmore's shoulder like a sack of grain, as he passed out with the moving mass, had an odd effect. It was partly the white dress that did it—and the time was ripe.

Courtrey and his gang were toward the fore—first out. They spread off to one side with jest and quip, with flash of bottle and slap on shoulder. The populace thinned a bit from the steps.... And then suddenly as a pistol shot Cleve Whitmore's voice rang out like a clarion.

"Wylackie!" it pealed across the subdued noises, "You —— —— —— hell hound. Turn round!"

There was death in it.

The gun man whirled, drawing like lightning. In the Court House door, Cleve Whitmore with his sister's limp form on his shoulder, beat him to it.

He had drawn as he called. Before the words were off his lips he pulled the trigger and shot Wylackie through the heart.

As his henchman fell Courtrey's good hand flashed to his hip, but Dixon of the Vigilantes, shot out an arm and knocked him forward from behind.

For the second time Courtrey had missed a life because a brave heart dared him. Old Pete had paid the price for that trick. Dixon had no thought of it.

And in one moment the chance was past, for a sound began to roar from that silent crowd which had poured from the courtroom—the deep, bloodcurdling sound of the mob forming, inarticulate, uncertain.

For the first time in his life Courtrey felt real fear grip him.

He had killed and stolen and wronged among these people and gotten away with it. He had never feared them. They had been silent. Now with the first deep rumble from the concrete throat of Lost Valley he got his first instinctive thrill of disaster.

He stood for a moment in utter silence. Then he flung up his hands, snapped out an order, whirled on his heel and went swiftly to the near rack where stood Bolt and the rest of the Ironwoods. Like a set of puppets on strings his men drew after him—and they left Wylackie Bob where he fell.

In a matter of seconds the whole Stronghold gang was mounted and clattering down the street—out of the town toward the open range.

* * * * *

And the killer on the Court House steps?

He stood where he was and looked with blazing eyes over the motley crowd beneath him. Steptoe Service made a step toward him, looked round, wet his lips and thought better of it.

* * * * *

And then, in another second, the crowd was a mob and the mob was the Vigilantes. Some one took Ellen from Cleve's shoulder with careful hands and carried her away. Then some one reached down and picked him up bodily. Another joined, and they set him on their shoulders, lifting him high. The inarticulate mob cry swelled and deepened and rose to a different sound—a shout that gathered volume and roared out across the spaces where Courtrey rode with a menace, a portent.

With one accord the mob started on a journey around Corvan.

White as Ellen, Cleve Whitmore rode that triumphant journey, his eyes still blazing, his lips tight. The town went wild. Public feeling came out on every hand. Daring took the weak, hope took the oppressed, and they called Courtrey's reign right there. For three uproarious hours the bar-tenders could not wipe off their bars.

A new regime was ushered in—and she who had been its sponsor was not there to see it.

* * * * *

When the hour of Change was striking for Corvan and all Lost Valley, Tharon Last, who had set it to strike, was scaling False Ridge in the Canon Country. Grim, ash-pale with effort, her blue eyes shining, she climbed the Secret Way that few had ever found.

How she had come to it through the tortuous cuts and passes was a marvel of homing instinct—the heart that homed to its object. It had seemed to her all along this strange, tense journey, that she had had no will of her own, that she had held her breath and shut her eyes, as it were, and gone forward in obedience to some strange thing within that said, "turn here," "go thus." Billy following behind, watched her with tight lips and a secret wonder. As she had told him she would "go straight, Mary willing," so she had gone straight—and it seemed, truly, as if it were right that she should, no matter how his heart ached to see this thing.

Verily there was something supernatural about it all, something uncanny.

If it had been he, Billy, whom Tharon loved, and had he lain, wounded in the Cup o' God, would the girl have been given this blind instinct for direction? Would she have gone as unerringly to the Secret Way?

Nay—there must be something in the old saying that, for every heart in the world there was its true mate.

Tharon had found hers in Kenset.

But where would he ever find his? The boy shook his fair head hopelessly at the sliding floors. For all perfection there must be sacrifice. He was the sacrifice for Tharon's perfection—a willing one, so help him!

That they had found the Secret Way across False Ridge was perfectly plain, for here in the living rock before them were marks, the first marks they had found in the Canons. Thin, small crosses, cut in the stone of the walls, began to lead upward from the last liftings cut straight up the Rockface of False Ridge itself. It seemed, to look at the dim traces, that no living thing without wings could scale that steep and forbidding cliff, but when they tried to climb, they found that each step had been set with artful cunning. The set of steps followed the form of a "switchback," working from right to left, and always rising a little. False Ridge itself, a towering, mighty spine, came down in a swiftly dropping ridge from somewhere in the high upper country at the west of all the canyons. It was known to lead deceptively down among the cuts and passes, as if it went straight down to the lower levels, and to end abruptly in a precipice that none could descend or climb. On all its rugged sides there were treacherous slopes which looked hard enough to support a man, but which, once stepped on, gave sickeningly away to slide and slither for a hundred feet straight down to some abrupt edge, where they fell in dusty cataracts to blind basins and walled cups below.

In these blind cups were many skeletons of deer and other animals that had ventured down from the upper world, never to return. Somewhere up here must be the bones of Canon Jim.

But the Secret Way was safe. Under every carefully worked out step there was solid stone, for every handhold there was a firm stake set. These stakes were old for the most part, but here and there had been set in a new one—Courtrey's work, they made no doubt, for Courtrey was said to know the Canons. It took Tharon and Billy two hours to make the climb, stopping from time to time to rest. At such times the boy stood close and took her hand. It was grim work looking down the sheer face, and one might well be excused for holding a hand for steadiness. And it would soon be the time for no more touches of this girl's fair self for Billy.

And so, climbing steadily and in comparative silence, these two, whose hearts were strong, came at last to the top of False Ridge—a thin knife-blade of stone—and looked abruptly and suddenly down on the other side.

With a little gasp Tharon put a hand to her throat, for there, an unbelievably short distance down, lay the Cup o' God, without a doubt. A small, round glade of living green, watered by a whispering stream that lost itself the Lord knew where, it lay like a tiny gem in the pink stone setting. Trees stood in utter quiet about its edges, for there was here no slightest breath of air. Lush grass carpeted its level floor. And there, almost directly under the marked way leading down, lay a tiny camp—the ashes of a dead fire, a gun against a tree, and—here Tharon leaned far out and looked as if her very spirit would penetrate the distance—a blanket spread on the level earth, on which there lay the body of a man!

It was a trim body, they could see from where they stood, clad in dark garments of olive drab that hugged the lean limbs close.

"Kenset!" whispered Tharon with paling lips. "Kenset of th' foothills,—an'—he—looks," she wet those ashy lips, "he—looks like he is dead."

Without another word she set her feet in the precarious way and went down so fast that Billy's heart rose in his throat and choked him, and for the first time since he could remember, he called fervently upon his Maker with honest reverence. He thought at every slip and scramble that she must fall and go hurtling down the Rockface.

But that uncanny instinct which had brought her this far was at her command still. She went down faster than it seemed possible for anything to go, and before the rider was able to catch up she had leaped to the grassy floor, and was running forward toward that still form on the blanket.

"Kenset!" she cried like a bugle, "Kenset! Kenset! Oh,—David!"

And then it was that the quiet form stirred, rolled over on its side, lifted itself on an elbow—and held out two arms that wavered grotesquely, but were eloquent of love's power and its need.

And the Mistress of Last's flung herself on her knees, gathered up this strange man as if he had been a child, pressed him hard against her breast, and kissed him as we kiss our dead. She pushed his face from her and looked into it as if she would see his very soul, the tears running on her white cheeks, her lips working soundlessly.

This was love! This agony—this ecstasy—this sublime forgetting of all the world beside—this reward after struggle.

Billy stood for a second at the foot of the Wall, and the nails cut in his palms. Then he whirled and went fast as he could walk toward the first trees that presented themselves—and he could not see where he was going for the bleak grey mist that swam in his eyes.

This was love! This dreary colour of the golden sunlight of noon in the high country—this dumb ache that locked his throat—this high courage that brought him serving love's object to the bitter-sweet end. How long he stood there he did not know. His heart was dead, like the weathered stone country about him. He knew that he heard Tharon's voice after a while, that golden voice which had been the bells of Last's, in rapid question and answer—and Kenset's voice, too, weak and slow, but filled with joy unspeakable. It was lilting and soft, a lover's voice, a victor's voice, and presently he caught a few of the broken words that passed between them—"Clean! Clean! Oh, Tharon, darling—there is no blood on these dear hands! Tell me you did not kill Courtrey!"

He heard Tharon answer in the negative.

And then all the world fell about him, it seemed, for a gun cracked from the trees beyond him and a wasp stung his cheek.

In one instant the sunlight became brilliant again, the joy came back in the day. Here was something more to do for Tharon, a new task at hand when he had thought his tasks were all but done.

He whirled, looked, drew his six-gun and began firing at the man who stood in plain sight just where he had stepped into the Cup from the mouth of a little blind cut where the stream went out in noise and lost itself.

This was a big man, sinister and cold and dark, a half-breed Pomo of Courtrey's gang, a still-hunter who did a lot of the dirty work which the others refused. Billy had seen him before, knew his record.

Now they two stood face to face and fired at each other swiftly, coolly. He saw the half-breed stagger once, knew that he had touched him somewhere. And then a sound cut into the snapping of the shots, a sound that was like nothing he had ever heard in all his life before, a sound as savage as the roar of a she-bear whose cub is killed before her eyes. As he flung away his empty gun and snatched the other, he moved enough to bring into his range of vision Tharon Last, standing over Kenset, her mouth open in that savage cry.

Then before he could draw and fire again he saw the prettiest piece of work he had ever witnessed. He saw the gun woman crouch and stoop, saw her hands flash in Jim Last's famous backhand flip, saw the red flame spurt from her hips, and the Pomo half-breed flung up his hands and fell in a heap, his face in the grass. He did not move. Only a long ripple passed over his body. He was still as the ageless rocks, as much a part of eternity. For a moment Billy stood, the gun hanging in his hand. Then he knew that Tharon was coming toward him—that her hands were on his shoulders—her deep eyes piercing his with a look that meant more to him than all the earth beside. It was the fierce, mother-look of changeless affection, the companion to that savage cry. She held him in a pinching grip, and made sure that he was unhurt, save for that scratch on the cheek.

"If he had killed you, Billy," she said tensely, "I'd a-gone a-muck an' shot up th' whole of Lost Valley."

And the boy knew in his heart she spoke the solemn truth.

He slipped his hands down her arms and caught her fingers tightly.

"Stained!" his heart whispered to itself in stifling exhilaration, "in spite of all—her first killin'—an' for me!"

Then he could bear her face no more, and turned to look at Kenset. Half off the edge of his blanket the forest man lay with his face buried in his hands, and beside him lay another gun, the smoke still curling from its muzzle.

"By God!" said the rider, softly, "what's this?" and he ran forward to pick up the weapon.

"Three of us!" he said aloud, "pepperin' him at once! Kenset, where did you get this gun?"

But Kenset did not speak. His shoulders trembled, his dark head was bowed to the earth.

"Answer me," said Billy, "for as sure's I live, this here's Buck Courtrey's favourite gun—the gun with the untrue firin' pin. Look here." And he held it toward Tharon who leaned near to look. True enough.

In the right side of the plunger there was a small, shining nick, as if, at some previous time, a tiny chink had been broken out of it.

"I found it where I saw Courtrey hide it that night they brought me here," said Kenset in a muffled voice. "I crawled when the Pomo was out in the Canons after meat."

"An' you used it—at last. I see. Not till th' last."

"No," said Kenset miserably, "not till the last."

Slowly Tharon knelt down beside him and put a tender arm across his shoulders. Her face was shining—like Billy's heart.

"Mr. Kenset," she said softly, "I told you once that I was afraid you was soft—like a woman—that you wouldn't shoot if you had a gun. An' you said, 'You're right. I wouldn't. Not until th' last extremity.'

"What was this last extremity? Tell me. Why did you shoot when you knew right well I'd get him myself?"

"To beat you to it!" cried the man with sudden passion, "to take the stain myself!"

For a long moment the girl knelt there beside him and gazed unseeingly at the inscrutable calm of the silent country. Something in the depths of her blue eyes was changing—deepening, growing in subtle beauty, as if the universe was suddenly become perfect, as if there was nowhere a flaw.

"There's only one kind of man, after all, Mr. Kenset," she said at last with a sweet dignity, "th' man who is true an' honest to th' best there is in him, accordin' to his lights. That's my kind of man."

* * * * *

Then she rose, and it was as if a light of activity burned up in her. She became practical on the instant.

"I'm glad you brought th' thin rope, Billy," she said, "it's longer'n mine. An' th' little axe, too. We'll need 'em all to get him up an' down False Ridge. An' we must get busy right pronto. Th' Pomo killer we'll leave where he is. The Canon Country will make him a silent grave."



CHAPTER XI

FINGER MARK AND IRONWOOD AT LAST

It was another noon in Lost Valley. The summer sun sailed the azure skies in majesty. Little soft winds from the south wimpled the grass of the rolling ranges, shook all the leaves of the poplars. Down the face of the Wall the Vestal's Veil shimmered and shone like a million miles of lace.

At Corvan wild excitement ruled. Swift things had come upon them, things that staggered the tight-lipped community, even though it was used to speed and tragedy. For one thing, Ellen, pale, sweet flower, had hanged herself in the gaudy apartment of Lola behind the Golden Cloud where the dance-hall woman had peremptorily brought her when they took her off Cleve Whitmore's shoulder. She left a little note for Courtrey, a pathetic short scrawl, which simply reiterated that she had "ben true to him as his shadow," and that if he did no longer want her, she did not want herself.

At that pitiful end to a guiltless life, Lola, who knew innocence and sin, sat down on the only carpeted floor in Corvan and wept. When she finished, she was done with Corvan and Lost Valley, ready to move on as she had moved through an eventful life.

For another thing, two strange men had ridden up the Wall from the Bottle Neck a few days back, and they had put through some mysterious doings.

This day at noon these two strangers were riding down on Corvan from up the Pomo way, while from the Stronghold, Buck Courtrey's men were thundering in with the cattle king at their head. He was grim and silent, black with gathering rage. His news-veins tapped the Valley, he knew a deal that others tried to hide, and he was coming in to reach a savage hand once more toward that supremacy which he knew full well to be slipping from him.

And from the blind mouth in the Rockface at the west where the roofed cut led to the mystery and the grandeur of the Canon Country, a strange procession came slowly out to crawl across the green expanse—a woman on a silver horse, a rider on a red roan who sat behind the saddle and bore in his arms a man whose heavy head lolled upon his shoulder in all but mortal weakness.

Thus Fate, who had for so long played with life and death in Lost Valley, tiring of the play, drew in the strings of the puppets and set the stage for the last act.

As Tharon and Billy crept up to Baston's store and stopped at the steps, a dozen eager men leaped forward to their help.

"Easy!" warned the girl. "He's ben hurt a long time, an' he's had an awful trip. There's fever in him, an' th' wound in his shoulder opened a bit with th' haulin'. Lay him down on th' porch a while to rest."

But Kenset opened his dark eyes with the old quiet smile and looked at her.

"I'm worth a dozen dead men yet, Miss Last," he said.

As he lay, a trim, long figure in his semi-military garments, on the edge of the porch, the populace of Corvan streamed in from the outskirts and gathered in the open street. Whispers and comments were rife among them, a new courage was noticeable everywhere. The Vigilantes were present, many of them.

Question and answer passed swiftly and quietly back and forth between Dixon, Jameson, Hill and Tharon. In a few pregnant moments she knew what had happened in Corvan—they knew the secret of False Ridge and the Cup o' God.

"An' now these strangers from below—they ben a-actin' awful queer, ain't a-feared o' nothin' an' they ben goin' all over like a couple o' hounds. One of 'em's got on a badge of some sort," said Jameson, "didn't mean t' show it, I allow, but Hill, here, seen it by chanct——"

Kenset raised himself quickly on an elbow.

"By all that's lucky!" he said softly, excitedly. "Burn-Harris and O'Hallan! My Secret Service men!"

* * * * *

And it was even so, for by the end of another hour the two strangers came riding in and were brought forward to the steps where Kenset lay, to clasp his hand and greet him with all the pleasure of previous acquaintance.

Then they requested that a space be cleared to the end of ear-shot and together with Kenset, Tharon, Billy, and all the Vigilantes, they held a long and earnest colloquy.

At its end Kenset's eyes were deep and troubled, but Tharon's were beginning to glow with the old fire that all the Holding knew, the leaping flame that rose and died and rose again, exciting to the beholder, promising, threatening, unfathomable.

"Why, it's a cinch!" said O'Hallan, "a dead moral cinch! Don't see how it's held on like it has. Couldn't have in any other place in the good old U. S. A. but this God forsaken hole! Well named, Lost Valley! Why, we've found enough evidence already to convict a dozen men! Your Courtrey's the man that planned a dozen murders, I can see that, and he's pulled off a lot of them himself. The people are talking now, rumbling from one end of the Valley to the other. We've had to hold up our hands to ward them off lately. Your Vigilantes here have opened up since we got them together and showed some of them your letter. You were wise to tell us to go ahead if you were not here—what did you look for?"

"Just about what I got," said Kenset smiling, "and I wanted things to be pushed through anyway."

"Well,—they're pushing," said Burn-Harris. "Your little old sheriff has had the fear-of-the-Lord put into him somewhat. He's shaking in his boots about the snow-packer. There's only one thing lacking to make our grip close down on Courtrey, and that's vital—the gun with the untrue firing pin you speak about in your instructions."

"Not lackin'," said Tharon grimly, "we've got it, Mister."

The Secret Service man whirled to her.

"You have?" he cried, "then show me your man!"

But Tharon stood for a long moment looking off across the rolling green stretches, toward the north where a moving dot was drawing down—the riders from the Stronghold.

"This," she said at last, tapping the gun which Billy handed over, "this, then, is proof—is proof in law?"

"If it's the true gun that fits the shell which Mr. Kenset left for us here at Baston's—yes."

"Then," said Burn-Harris, "a little time and your man's ours as sure's the sun shines. Why, this is a hot-bed of crime—there's enough work here to keep a whole force busy for months."

But Tharon Last did not heed his words. Her mind had leaped away from the present back to that day in spring when Jim Last came home to die. She heard again his last command, "Th' best gun woman in Lost Valley," heard her own voice promising to his dulling ears, "I'll get him, so help me, God!"

And this was the end. Strangers were waiting to fulfill that promise, to take her work out of her hands. She absently watched the moving dot take form and sharply string out into a line of riding men. These strangers with their hidden signs of authority would bring to his just desserts Buck Courtrey, the man who had instigated the killing of poor Harkness, who had personally shot her daddy in the back! For them, then, she had made her crosses of promise in the granite under the pointing pine.

They who had no right in Lost Valley would settle its blood scores, would pay her debts!

She frowned and the fingers of her right hand fiddled at the gun-butt at her hip.

For what had she striven all these many months? For what had she perfected herself in Jim Last's art?

A little white line drew in about her lips, the flame in her blue eyes leaped and flickered. The tawny brows gathered into a puckered frown.

Billy, watching, moved restlessly on his booted feet. He it was who saw—who feared. He touched her wrist with timid fingers and she flashed him a swift glance that half melted to a smile. Then she forgot him and all the rest—for the Ironwoods were thundering in from the outside levels, were coming into town.

Ahead rode Courtrey, big, black, keen, his wide hat swept back on his iron-grey hair, an imposing presence.

"Here's your man!" said Kenset softly, rising excitedly on his elbow. "He's coming! And God grant that there is no bloodshed!"

All of Corvan, so long meek and quiet under Courtrey's foot, moved dramatically back to give him room to come thundering down to his accounting.

In a few seconds he would be encompassed by his enemies.

And then, on the tick of fate, that universally unknown factor, a woman's heart, flung its last pawn in the balance.

Lola, gleaming like a bird of paradise in her gay habiliments, leaning forward from the further steps of Baston's store where she had slipped up unnoticed, cupped her white hands to her scarlet mouth, and sent out a cry like a clarion.

"Buck!" she called, bell-like, clear, far-reaching—"Buck! Turn back! They've called your turn! It's all up for you! Go! Go—down—the Wall! And—God bless you—Buck! Good-bye!"

For one awful moment the great red Ironwood, Bolt, flung up his head and slid forward on his haunches, ploughing up the earth in a cloud.

Then, while the half-stunned crowd gaped in silence, he gathered himself, straightened, whirled, shook his giant frame and leaped clear of the ground in a spectacular turn. The man on his back snatched off his hat and shook it defiantly at the town—the people—the very Valley that he had ruled so long. It was a dramatic gesture—daring, scorning, renouncing. Then, without a word to his henchmen, a single look of farewell, Buck Courtrey struck the Ironwood, and was gone back along the little street.

His men whirled after him, but strange turn of destiny, they swung directly north away from him, for he was turning south at the town's edge.

"For the—Wall!" breathed Lola, her face like milk, one hand on her glittering breast. "He—goes—for below!"

Then all the watchers knew the same.

The master of the Stronghold, having played for Lost Valley and for a woman and lost them both—was done with both.

He leaned on the Ironwood's mighty neck and went south toward the Bottle Neck.

All eyes were upon him—all, that is, save the earnest grey ones of Billy Brent. They were fixed in anguish on the face of Tharon Last beside him—Tharon Last, who shoved the gun-butts hard down in the holsters at her hips, who whirled on her booted heel, who cleared the space between her and El Rey in three cat-like leaps.

As she went up the stallion rose with her, came down with a pounding of iron-shod hoofs, dropped his huge hips in the first leap—and was away.

Corvan saw the silver horse shoot out from its midst and woke from its lethargy.

"Th' race!" some one cried, high and shrill, "th' race at last!"

The two strangers saw it, and their lips fell open with amaze.

Kenset from his low porch saw it—and dropped his face on his arms.

"Lord God!" he groaned, "it's come! I couldn't hold her! I might have known! I might have known! She's Valley bred—she is the Valley! I—and all I stand for—chaff in the wind! Nothing could hold her now! Aye—nothing could hold her."

True at last to herself—true to Harkness—true to Jim Last—true to the Vigilantes and to the Valley she loved, Tharon flung the sombrero from her bright head, settled her feet in the stirrups, slid the rein on El Rey's neck, leaned down above him and began to call in his ears.

No need of that cry.

El Rey heeded nothing that she might say. She was not his master—never had been. He had had but one, the big, stern man whose sharp word had been his law—the one who had ever had his best, his love and his speed.

What was it now that rode in his saddle—the saddle with the long dark stain?

Assuredly it was not the slim girl-thing with the golden voice!

El Rey had ever looked through, beyond her.

Nay, it was something bigger, stronger, sterner—who shall say? Perhaps the spirit of that master whom he had served, whom he had brought faithfully home that night in spring, for whom he had looked and listened all these weary months! There was something, indeed—for El Rey, the great, lay down to earth and ran without the need of guidance. He set the long red horse out there on the green plain before him like a beacon and put the mighty machinery of his massive body into motion. Bolt was a rival worthy of his best—Bolt, the king of the Ironwoods, huge, spirited, fast as the wind and wild as fire. El Rey's silver ears lay back along his neck, the mane above them was like a cloud, his long tail streamed behind him like a comet—and forgotten was his singlefooting. He ran, his great limbs gathering and spreading beneath him—gathering and spreading—with the regularity, of clock-work.

Tharon's blue eyes were narrow as her father's, the little lines about them stood out. She rode low, like a limpet clinging, and her mind was on the two ahead—the man and the great bay horse.

As she felt the wind sing by her cheeks, sting the tears beneath her lids, she shut her lips tighter and hugged the pommel closer.

The green carpet went by beneath her like a blur. The thunder of El Rey's beating hoofs was like the sound of the cataracts when the canyons shot their freshets from the Rockface.

The note of his speed was rising—rising—rising. The blood began to pound in her temples with pride and exultation.

She saw the distance narrowing just the smallest bit between her and Courtrey. Just the smallest trifle, indeed, but narrowing.

"He ain't a-puttin' Bolt down to his best," she told herself tensely, "I know what he can do." And she remembered that ride from the mouth of Black Coulee to the pine-guarded glade—and Kenset. At that thought she pressed her lips tighter.

No thought of Kenset must come to her now—to weaken her with memory of those pressing, vital hands of his above his pounding heart.

No—she was herself again—Tharon Last, Jim Last's girl, the gun woman of Lost Valley—and yonder went her father's killer.

She leaned down and called again in El Rey's ear.

No slightest spurt of speed rewarded her—nothing but the rising note. Then she saw that the distance was widening—just a tiny bit.

Truly it was widening. Courtrey, looking back, had caught the sun on her golden hair, on her face as white as milk. He saw that her hands were at her hips—loosely set back at her hips—and what thought he might have had of mercy at her hands—what wild vision he might have seen of speech with her—of parley—of persuasion—was dead.

He leaned down and struck the Ironwood with his open hand.

Bolt, the beautiful, leaped in answer. A little more—slowly—the distance between pursuer and pursued widened. Then—Tharon blinked the mist from her eyes to make sure—the gain was lost. Slowly, steadily, El Rey closed up the extra width. Then for a time there was no change. The open plain resounded to the roar of hoofs, the wind sang by like taut strings struck. The earth was still that racing green blur beneath.

And still the electric note of rising speed hummed softly higher.

If Jim Last rode his silver stallion to the goal of vengeance he must surely have been satisfied. The great shoulders worked like pistons, the whole massive body was level as the flowing floor beneath, the steel-thewed limbs reached and doubled—reached and doubled—with wonderful power and precision.

And then at last Tharon knew—knew that El Rey was gaining, slowly, steadily, surely. The splendid bay horse was running magnificently, but El Rey ran like a super-horse. His silver head was straight as a level, his ears laid back, his nostrils wide and flaring, red as blood, his big eyes glowed with the wildness of savage flight.

The great king was mad with speed!

Jim Last's girl was mad also—mad with the lust of conquest, of revenge.

She rose a little from the stallion's whipping mane, and her blue eyes burned on the man ahead.

"I said I'd get you, Buck Courtrey!" she muttered, "that some day I'd run th' Ironwoods off their feet—th' heart out of their master!

"Run, damn you—for it's your last ride!"

Then she dropped forward again and watched the distance closing down.

Nearer—nearer—nearer!

The note rose another notch.

Never in his life had El Rey run as he ran now. Always he had had reserves. He had them now. The bottom of his power was not reached.

Bolt was doing his best. Once he threw up his head and foam flew on the wind—red foam that shot back and whipped on Tharon's hand, a wet pink stain, thinned and faded.

At that sight an exultant cry, savage, inhuman, ugly, burst from her throat.

She was within long gunshot now—was closing her fingers lightly on the blue gun-butts——.

Courtrey heard that cry.

He rose in his saddle—turned—flashed up his hand and fired. Quick as the motion of the gun man was, Tharon Last was quicker. She dropped over El Rey's shoulder like a cat, firing as she went.

Courtrey's bullet clipped the cantle of the big saddle an inch above her flattened leg across it. Hers did something else—what she had dreamed of. It struck that other wrist of Courtrey's, the left—and sent his six-gun tumbling.

Once again she yelled as she came back in her saddle.

And El Rey was closing—closing up the gap between.

Once again Tharon raised her guns to shoot—both, this time, as her daddy had taught her. This was the pinnacle of her life, her skill, her training.

Never again would she live a moment like it. She laughed and crouched for the final act.

But a sudden coldness went over her from head to foot, sent the hot blood shaking down her spine.

What was Courtrey doing?

He rode straight up at last, like an Indian showing, and his bleeding left hand swung at his side. With the other he had swept off his wide hat, so that his handsome iron-grey head was bare to the summer sun. His keen hawk face was lifted. He made a spectacular figure—like a warrior, unarmed, waiting his end with courage.

Unarmed!

That it was which struck Tharon like a hand across her face. The gun he had used with his left hand was his only one! He had carried but one since that night at the Stronghold when she had first marked him.

She should have known! Word of this had been about Corvan and the Valley.

And so she had Buck Courtrey at her mercy. She could close the lessening gap and kill him in his saddle——

But the icy blood still seemed to trickle down her back.

She—and Jim Last—they had always fought in fair-and-open. They were no murderers.... They did not strike in the dark—shoot a man from ambush—nor kill a man unarmed.... And Kenset—Kenset of the foothills—what had he said about the stain of blood—blood-guilt—clean hands——

The girl caught her breath with a choking sob.

The game was up.

Neither Jim Last—nor Kenset—nor she—would shoot a man unarmed.

And Courtrey was riding toward the Bottle Neck.

He would go down the Wall to freedom.

And the crosses in Jim Last's granite—they would be forever unredeemed, a shame, a sadness, a living accusation!

Nay—not that! Not that!

She had promised—and the Law was waiting—the big Law of below.

She was Jim Last's daughter still.

She leaned closer to El Rey's neck—held her two guns ready—and rode with the very wind.

She was near now—she could see Courtrey's face, waxen white but fearless, his dark eyes turned back toward her in a sort of desperate admiration.... Courtrey loved strength and courage and all things wild and fierce. She could see Bolt's staring eyeballs, his open mouth, gasping and piteous. One more moment—another—yet one more—then she rose in her stirrups and fired straight at the broad bay temple, shining and black with sweat!

The great gallant Ironwood went down in a huge arc—first his beautiful head, then the sinking arch of his neck, then the shoulders that had worked so wondrously. He rolled on his back like a hoop, his iron-shod hoofs spinning for one spectacular moment in the air. Then he lay at sudden ease, his still fluttering nose pointing directly back the way he had come.

With the first catching stumble of the true forefeet, the man on his back had shot out of the saddle and far ahead. He landed twenty feet away and squarely on his head and shoulders. Like Bolt, Courtrey's body turned a complete somersault—and lay still, at sudden peace.

Tharon Last and El Rey went on like an arrow—they could not stop.

When at last she did draw the great king down she was far and away from the spot. She turned her head, panting and dizzy, and looked back.... She could see the prone red heap that was Bolt—a little way beyond that other, lesser, darker heap....

For a long time she sat on El Rey's heaving back and stared unseeingly at the green earth where the short grasses quivered in the little wind.

There was a deathly white line about her lips, but her eyes blazed with the fire that had characterized them from birth, the flickering, unfathomable flame that came and went.

Then, presently, new lines came in her young face, unstable lines that quivered and worked, and all the good green earth danced grotesquely before her vision, for a wall of tears shut out the world. ... She laid her head down on El Rey's cloudy mane—and wept.

* * * * *

It was early dawn at Last's Holding. The sun was not yet up behind the eastern ramparts. The cottonwoods whispered in the dawn-wind, the spring beneath the milk-house talked and murmured. Out in the big corrals the cattle were beginning to stir and bawl.

In the kitchen old Anita and young Paula had breakfast waiting for the men.

Deep in that dim south room where the pale Virgin kept watch and ward, Kenset of the foothills slept in healing peace.

And at the step of the western door, Billy stood by Golden—Golden the beautiful, who ranked next to El Rey himself—and his face was lifted to Tharon who drooped against the lintel with her forehead on her arm.

The boy held her hand clasped in both of his own, and there was a yearning tenderness in his soft voice when he spoke, a pride and joy ineffable that glowed above the pain that was never to leave him.

"It ain't that I love you less, Tharon, dear," he said gently, "that I must go. Not that, little girl. I'll love you till I die—that I know in dead certainty. But I can't stay here—not where I'll have to see you givin' all your sweet self to another man. A good man, too, Tharon—I think there ain't a better one in th' land—but—well,—I can't—that's all. I can't thank you for all you've done for me sence you was a little mite of a girl—five years back,"—his voice broke a bit, but he controlled it, "nor for th' joy you've given me—th' rides together—an' th' jokes an' playin'——"

He paused a moment, unhappily, and the mistress of Last's drooped more heavily against the old adobe wall.

"Nor for Golden here," went on the rider, "we'll be pals as long as we both live—nor fer-fer—" he stopped again, hesitated, looked yearningly at the quivering cheek against the curving arm, and went on to the finish.

"Nor fer that one kiss, Tharon—it's my one treasure for life, so help me, God—that you give me that night. An' over all I want to thank you fer—fer—killin' th' Pomo half-breed in th' Cup o' God—fer you done that trick fer me! Th' one stain on your dear hands—fer me—the only one, fer Fate killed Courtrey, not you. His neck was clean broke when they picked him up.... That memory will keep me alive, will save th' beauty of th' stars at night fer me, will make th' rest worth livin'.... That one kiss."

He stopped again and stood for a long time looking at her as if he would fix forever in his memory the beauty of her, the fire, the spirit, the elusive quality that was Tharon Last herself.

Then he sighed and smiled and gently shook the hand he held.

"Come—tell me good-bye, Tharon, dear," he said softly.

For answer the mistress of Last's once again reached out her arms and drew his head to her heart—once more pressed her lips upon his own.

"Oh, Billy," she said with a sound of tears in her voice, "Kenset's th' one man—that's true, an' I'm helpless before th' fact—but there'll never be another can take your place in my heart—there'll never be no one to ride with me in th' Big Shadow in just th' same way, Billy—to hold my hand as we come home to Last's with that same sweet, honest friendship, that don't need words! I've got my life-love, but I've lost my life-friend—an' my heart's sore—sore with pain!"

The rider lifted his face and it was glorified in the first rays of the sun that was rising over the eastern mountains. His gayly studded belt and riding cuffs, his spurs and the vanity of silver on his wide hat caught the glow and sparkled brightly. Joy became paramount over sadness.

"Don't you fret, Tharon," he said, still in that soft voice, "I'm always at your shoulder in spirit—in body, too, if you ever want me or need me. So long."

And he kissed both the hands he held, dropped them, turned and mounted Golden, waved a hand to all the Holding, and putting the horse to a run, went down the sounding-board as if he dared not look back.

Until horse and rider were a tiny speck on the living green—until they passed the Silver Hollow and the mouth of Black Coulee, Tharon Last stood in the western door and watched them with dim blue eyes.

Ail the wide expanse of Lost Valley was still and sweet with dawn, smiling as if with a new and wondrous peace, the Vestal's Veil shimmered on the Rockface, the distant peaks above the Canon Country cut the skies.

She scanned the little world about and felt this peace press down upon her soul—as if the questions all were answered, the duty done.

Never in all her life before had Last's Holding seemed to her so secure and settled, so sweet and to be desired....

Within it lay her destiny—the man in the cool south room.

Without in the great Valley lay a future.

Love was with her—friendship would be with her always in memory, one glowing with its vital presence, the other softened and doubly sweet with the sorrow of absence.

She raised her hand and made the sign of the Cross between herself and that disappearing speck, then she turned and followed old Anita carrying gruels to that dim south room.

THE END