“Who for?”
He looked at her sharply.
“Who for?”
“Yes. What outfit?”
There was a hard quality in her voice. If he had come in to ride for Courtrey, why he must know at once that Last’s was no friend of his, now or ever.
He caught the drift of her thought in part.
“For no outfit, Miss Last,” he said with a gentle dignity. “I am in the employ of the United States Government.”
A swift change came over Tharon’s face.
Government!
That was no word to conjure by in Lost Valley. Steptoe Service prated of Gov’ment. It was a farce, a synonym for juggled duty, a word to suggest the one-man law of the place, for even Courtrey, who made the sheriffs––and unmade them––did it under the grandiloquent name of Government. She looked at him keenly, and there was a sudden hardening in her young eyes.
“Then I reckon, Mister,” she said coolly, “that you an’ me can’t be friends.”
“What?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you in earnest?”
“Certainly am,” said Tharon. “I ain’t on good terms at present with anything that has t’ do with law.”
David Kenset leaned forward and looked into her face with his deep, compelling eyes.
“I guessed as much from my first knowledge of you the other day,” he answered, “but we are on unfamiliar ground. You have a wrong conception of Government, a perverted idea of law and what it stands for.”
“All right, Mister,” said the girl rising. “We won’t argy. I asked you t’ dinner, but I take it back. I ask ye t’ forgive me my manners, but th’ sooner we part th’ better. Then we won’t be a-hurtin’ each other’s feelin’s. I’m fer law, too, but it ain’t your kind, an’ we ain’t likely to agree.”
She picked up his hat from where it lay on the melodeon and fingered it a bit, smiling at him in the ingenuous manner that was utterly disarming.
A slow dark flush spread over the man’s face. He laughed, however, and in reaching for the hat, caught two of her fingers, whether purposely or not, Tharon could not tell.
“Admirable hospitality in the last frontier,” he said. “But perhaps I should not have expected anything different.”
“You make me ashamed,” said Tharon straightly, “but Last’s ain’t takin’ chances these days. You may belong to Government, an’ you may belong to Courtrey, an’ I’m against ’em both.”
She walked with him to the door, stepped out, as if with some thought to soften her unprecedented treatment of the stranger under her roof. She noted the trim figure of him in its peculiar garb, the proud carriage, the even and easy comportment under insult.
From his saddle he untied a package wrapped in paper.
“Will you please take this?” he asked lightly, holding it out. “Just on general principles.”
But she shook her head.
“I can’t take no favours from you when I’ve just took stand against you, can I?” she asked in turn.
“Well, of all the ridiculous–––”
The man laughed again shortly, tossed the package on the step, mounted, whirled and rode away without a backward glance.
Tharon stood frowning where he left her until the brown horse and its rider were well down along the levels toward Black Coulee.
Then a sigh at her shoulder recalled her and she turned to see the wistful dark face of Paula gazing raptly in the same direction.
“He was so handsome, Señorita,” said the girl, “to be so hardly dealt with.”
“Paula,” said the mistress bitingly, “will you remember who you’re talkin’ to? Do you want to go back to th’ Pomos under th’ Rockface?”
“Saints forbid!” cried Paula instantly.
“Then keep your sighs for José an’ mind your manners. Pick up that bundle.”
Swiftly and obediently the girl did as she was told, unrolling the wrapper from the package.
She brought to light the meal-sack which Tharon had dropped that day on Baston’s porch.
A slow flush stained Tharon’s cheeks at the sight, and she went abruptly into the house.
When the riders came in at night she told them in detail about the whole affair, for Last’s and its men were one, their interests the same.
They held counsel around the long table in the dining room under the hanging lamp, and Conford at her right was spokesman for the rest.
“He’s somethin’ official, all right, I make no doubt, Tharon,” he said when he had listened attentively, “but what or who I don’t know. I heard from Dixon about him comin’ into Corvan that day, an’ that he had rode far. No one knows his business, or what he’s in Lost Valley for. He’s some mysterious.”
“He’s goin’ to stay, so he told me,” went on the girl, “goin’ to build a house up where the pines begin an’ means to ride. But how’ll he live? What an’ who will he ride for? He said for Government.”
“What’s he mean by that?”
“Search me.”
“Wasn’t there nothin’ about him different? Nothin’ you could judge him by?” asked Billy.
“Yes, there was. He wore somethin’ on his breast, a sign, a dull-like thing with words an’ letters on it.”
“So?” said Conford quickly, “what was it like, Tharon? Can’t you describe it?”
“Can with a pencil,” said Tharon, rising. “Come on in.”
She went swiftly to the big desk in the other room and rummaged among its drawers for paper and pencil. These things were precious in Lost Valley.
Jim Last had had great stacks of paper, neat, glazed sheets with faint lines upon them, made somewhere in that mysterious “below” and brought in by pack train. It was on one of these, with the distinctive words “Last’s Holding” printed at the top, that the thirty men had signed themselves into the new law of the Valley.
To Tharon these sheets had always been magic, invested with grave dignity.
Anything done upon them was of import, irrevocable.
Thus had Jim Last inscribed the semi-yearly letters that went down the Wall with the cattle, or for supplies.
Now she spread a shining pad under the light, sat down in her father’s chair and began, carefully and minutely to reproduce the badge that meant authority of a sort, yet was not a sheriff’s star.
The riders, clustered at her shoulder, watched the thing take shape and form. At the end of twenty painstaking minutes Tharon straightened and looked up in the interested faces.
“There,” she said, “an’ its dull copper colour!”
And this was the shield with its unknown heraldry which Conford took up and studied carefully for a long time.
“‘Forest Service,’” he read aloud, “‘Department of Agriculture.’ Well, so far as I can see, it ain’t so terrifyin’. That last means raisin’ things, like beets an’ turnips an’ so on, an’ as for th’ forest part, why, if he stays up in his ‘fringe o’ pines’ I guess we ain’t got no call to kick. Don’t you worry, Tharon, about this new bird.”
“I’m a darned sight more worried about that other one, th’ Arizona beauty which Courtrey’s got in.”
“Forget th’ gun man, Burt,” said Billy, “this feller’s a heap more interestin’ to me, for I’ve got a hunch he’s a poet. Now who on this footstool but a poet would come ridin’ into Lost Valley with his badge o’ beets an’ his line o’ talk about ‘fringes o’ pines’ an’ ‘runnin’ streams,’ to quote Tharon?”
“Even poets are human, you young limb,” drawled Curly in his soft voice, “an’ I’m sorry for him if he starts your ‘interest,’ so to speak. He’ll need all his poetic vision t’ survive.”
“I hope, Billy,” said Tharon severely, and with lofty inconsistency, “that you’ll remember your manners an’ not start anything. Last’s is in for trouble enough without any side issues.”
“True,” said the boy instantly, “I’ll promise to leave th’ poet alone.”
Then the talk fell about the new well that had taken the place of the old Crystal and which was proving a huge success.
“Can’t draw her dry,” said Bent Smith, “pulled all of three hours with Nick Bob an’ Blue Pine yesterday an’ never even riled her.
“She’s good as th’ Gold Pool or th’ Silver Hollow now.”
“You’re some range man t’ make any such a comparison,” said Curly with conviction, “there ain’t no artificial water-well extent that can hold a candle t’ th’ real livin’ springs of a cattle country, when they’re such bubblin’, shinin’ beauties as th’ Springs of Last’s.”
“You’re right, Curly,” said Tharon quietly from under the light, “there’s nothin’ like them. They must be th’ blessin’s of God, an’ no mistake. They’re th’ stars at night, an’ th’ winds an’ th’ sunshine. They’re th’ lovers of th’ horses, th’ treasure of th’ masters. I love my springs.”
“So do th’ herds,” put in Jack Masters. “They’ll come fast at night now because they can smell th’ water far off, an’ it’s gettin’ pretty dry on th’ range.”
“Yes,” sighed Tharon, “it’s summer now, an’ Jim Last died in spring. A whole season gone.”
A whole season had gone, indeed, since that tragic night.
Last’s Holding had missed its master at each turn and point. A thousand times did Conford, the foreman, catch himself in the act of going to the big room to find him at his desk, a big, vital force, intent on the accounts of the ranch, a thousand times did he long for his keen insight. The vaqueros missed him and his open hand.
The very dogs at the steps missed him, and so did El Rey, waiting in his corral for the step that did not come, the strong hand on his bit.
And how much his daughter missed him only the stars and the pale Virgin knew.
For the next few days following the short, awkward visit of the stranger Tharon felt a prickle of uneasiness under her skin at every thought of it. There was something in the memory that confused and distressed her, a feeling of failure, of a lack in her that put her in a bad light to herself.
She knew that, instinctively, she had been protecting her own, that since Last’s had stepped out in the light against Courtrey she must take no chance. But should she have taken back the common courtesy of the offered meal? Would it not have been better to let him stay and meet Conford who would have been in at noon?
She vexed herself a while with these questions, and then dismissed them with her cool good sense.
“It’s done,” she told herself, “an’ can’t be helped. An’ yet, there was somethin’ about him, somethin’ that made me think of Jim Last himself––somethin’ in his quiet eyes––as if they had both come from somewhere outside Lost Valley where they grow different men. It was a––bigness, a softness. I don’t know.”
And with that last wistful thought she forgot all about the incident and the man, for the prediction of Jameson that dusk at the head of Rolling Cove became reality.
Dixon, who lived north along the Wall near the Pomo settlement, lost ten head of steers, all white and deeply earmarked, unmistakable cattle that could not be disguised.
Courtrey was resenting the vague something in the air that was crystallizing into resistance about him.
Word of the stealing ran about the Valley like a grass fire, more boldly than usual.
It came to Last’s in eighteen hours, brought by a horseman who had carried it to many a lonely homestead.
Tharon received it with a thrill of joy.
“Good enough,” she said, “no use wasting time.”
And she sent out a call for the thirty men.
* * *
CHAPTER V
THE WORKING OF THE LAW
It was a clear, bright morning in early summer. All up and down Lost Valley the little winds wimpled the grass where the cattle grazed, and brought the scent of flowers. In the thin, clear atmosphere points and landmarks stood out with wonderful boldness.
The homesteads set in the endless green like tiny gems, the stupendous face of the Wall, stretching from north to south and sheer as a plumb line for a thousand feet, was fretted with a myriad of tiny seams and crevasses not ordinarily visible.
Far up at the Valley’s head against the huge uplift of the jumbled and barren rocklands the scattered squat buildings of the Stronghold brooded like a monster.
Spread out on the velvet slopes below lay the herds that belonged to it, sleek fat cattle, guarded carelessly by a few lazy and desultory riders. Courtrey was too secure in his insolent might to take those rigid and untiring precautions which were the only price of safety to the lesser men of the community. Toward the south where the Valley narrowed to the Bottle Neck and the Broken Bend went out, there shimmered and shone like a silver ribbon hung down the cliff the thin, long shower of Vestal’s Veil fall.
The roar of it could be heard for miles like the constant and incessant wail of winds in time-worn cañons.
Along the floor of the Cup Rim range, sunken and hidden from the upper levels, there rode a compact group of horsemen. They went abreast, in column of fours, and they were armed to the teeth, a bristling presentation. All in all there were forty-two of them and at their head rode Tharon on El Rey, a slim and gallant young figure.
Her bright hair, tied with a scarlet ribbon, shone under her wide hat like an aureole. She talked with Conford who rode beside her, and now and then she smiled, for all the world as if she went to some young folks’ gathering, instead of to the first uncertain issue of blind mob law against outlaws.
But if she felt a lightness of excitement in her heart it was more than actuated by the grim and quiet band that followed.
They knew––and she knew, also––that what they did this day, in the open sunlight, meant savage strife and bloodshed for some as sure as death.
For two hours they rode across the sunken range where the cottonwoods and aspens made a lovely and mottled shade, to reach at last the sharp ascent to the uplands above. When they topped the rim and started forward, the huge herds of Courtrey lay spread before them, bright as paint on the living green. Two thousand cattle grazed there in peace and plenty. Here and there a rider sat his horse in idleness. At the first sight of the solidly formed mass coming out of the Cup Rim on to the levels, these riders straightened in their saddles and rode in closer to their charges.
The eyes of the newcomers went over the bright pattern of the grazing cattle. A motley bunch they were, red, black and white, with here and there descendants of the yellows which none but John Dement had ever owned in Lost Valley. Dement, riding near the head of the line saw this and muttered in his beard.
“Thar’s some o’ mine,” he said pointing, “th’ very ones that was stampeded. I’d know ’em in hell.”
SHE TALKED WITH CONFORD WHO RODE BESIDE HER AND NOW AND THEN SHE SMILED
With the nearing of the line of horsemen a rider detached himself from the right of the herd and went sailing away across the levels toward the distant Stronghold.
Quick as a flash Tharon Last lifted the rifle that lay ready on her pommel and sent a shot whining toward him.
“Just to show we mean business,” she muttered to herself.
The cowboy caught the warning and drew his running horse up to slide ten feet on its haunches.
He had meant to warn his boss, but a chance was one thing, certainty another.
“Dixon––Dement,” called Tharon rising in her stirrups, “when we get to work you pick out as near as you can, cattle that look like yours, an’ th’ same amount––not a head more.”
Then they swung forward at a run and swept down along the left flank of the herd. Here a rider raised his arm and fired point blank at the leaders. One-two-three his six-gun counted. He was a lean youngster, scarce more than a boy, a wild admirer of Courtrey, and he stood his defence with a sturdy gallantry that was worthy of a better cause.
“Damn you!” he yelled, standing in his stirrups, “what’s this?”
“Law!” pealed the high voice of Tharon as El Rey thundered down toward him. Then Buford, riding midway of the sweeping line, fired and the boy dropped his gun, swayed and clung to his saddle horn as his horse bolted and tore off at a tangent to the right, away from the herd.
“God!” cried the girl hoarsely, “I wish we didn’t have to! Did you kill him?”
“No,” called Buford sharply, “broke his arm.”
Tharon, to whom the high blue vault had seemed suddenly to swing in strange circles, shut her teeth with a click.
Abreast of the cattle she swerved El Rey aside, drew her guns and waited.
In among the grazing cattle, many of which had raised startled heads to eye the intruders, went the men. They worked swiftly and deftly. They knew that they were in plain sight of the Stronghold and expected every moment to see Courtrey and a dozen riders come boiling out. Those cowboys who had been in charge of the herd, sat where they were, without a move. Out of the bright mass the settlers cut first the ten head of steers, as nearly as possible all white, to take the place of Dixon’s band. Thomas and Black stood guard over them. Then they went back and took out yellows and yellow-spotted to the number of one hundred. It was fast work, the fastest ever done on the Lost Valley ranges, and every nerve was strained like a singing wire.
Under the dust cloud raised by the plunging hoofs, the whirling horses, the workers kept as close together as possible.
They rounded up the cut-outs, bunched them together compactly and swinging into a half circle, drove them rapidly back toward the oak-fringed edge of the Cup Rim. They passed close to where the slim boy stood by his horse, trying to wind the big red kerchief from his neck about his right arm from which the blood ran in a bright stream. Tharon swung out of her course and shot toward him.
“Here,” she cried swiftly, “let me tie it.”
“To hell with you,” said the lad bitterly, raising blazing eyes to her face. “You’ve made me false t’ Courtrey. I’d die first.”
“Die, then!” she flung back, “an’ tell your master that th’ law is workin’ in this Valley at last!”
Tharon of Lost Valley Page 7
