The girl lay flat at its edge and with her face to the crystal surface, drank long and deeply.
As she looked up with a smile, Billy Brent felt the heart in him contract with a sudden ache.
Her fresh face, its cheeks whipped pink under their tan by the winds, its blue eyes sparkling, its wet red lips parted over the white teeth, hurt him with a downright pain.
“Oh, Tharon,” he said with an accent that was all-revealing, “Oh, Tharon, dear!”
The girl scrambled to her feet and looked at him in surprise.
“Billy,” she said sharply, “what’s th’ matter with you? Are you sick?”
“Yes,” said the boy with conviction, “I am. Let’s go home.”
“Sick, how?” she pressed, with the born tyranny of the loving woman, “have you got that pain in your stomach again?”
Billy laughed in spite of himself, and the romantic ache was shattered.
“For the love of Pete!” he complained, “don’t you ever forget that? You know I’ve never et an ounce of Anita’s puddin’s since. No, I think,” he finished judiciously as he mounted Golden, “that I’ve caught somethin’, Tharon––caught somethin’ from that feller of th’ red-beet badge. Leastways I’ve felt it ever sence I left th’ clearin’.”
And as they swung away from the spring toward the Holding, far ahead under its cottonwoods, he let out the young horse for another stretch.
“Bet Golden can beat El Rey up home,” he said over his shoulder.
“Beat th’ king?” cried Tharon aghast, “you’re foolin’, Billy, an’ I don’t want to run nohow. I’ve run enough this day.”
So the rider held up again and together they paced slowly up through the gathering twilight where long blue shadows were reaching out to touch them from the western Wall and the golden shafts were turning to crimson, were lifting as the sun sank, were travelling up and up along the eastern mountains toward the pale skies. Soon they rode in purple dusk while the whole upper world was bathed in crimson and lavender light and Lost Valley lay deep in the earth’s heart, a sinister spot, secret and dark.
“Sometimes, Billy,” said Tharon softly, “I like to ride like this, in th’ big shadows––an’ then I like to have some one with me that I know, some one like you, some one who will understand when I don’t talk, an’ who is always there beside me. It’s a wonderful feelin’––but somehow, it’s soft, too––mebby too soft––like––like––like a woman who’s just a woman.”
The boy swallowed once, miserably.
“Always, Tharon,” he said huskily, “always––when you want me––or need me––I’ll be there, beside you. An’ you don’t need to even speak a word to me. I’m like th’ dogs––there whether you call or not.”
“I know,” said the girl, and reaching over she caught the rider’s hand, brown beneath its vanity of studded leather cuff, and gave it a little tender pressure.
Billy set his teeth to keep from crushing her fingers, and together they rode slowly up along the sounding slopes to the beautiful security and comfort of Last’s Holding.
* * *
CHAPTER VII
THE SHOT IN THE CAÑONS
Kenset of the foothills was very busy. Between study of his maps and the endless riding of their claimed areas he was out from dawn till dark.
He found, indeed, that none but he, of late years, had ridden those sloping forest covered skirts. Some one, sometime, must have done so, else the maps themselves would not have been, but what marks they must have left were either gone through the erosion of the elements or been wantonly destroyed.
He fancied the former had been the case, for he saw no signs of destruction, and the very curiosity of the denizens of the Valley precluded familiarity with forest work.
So he laid out for himself the labour of a dozen men and went at it with a vim that kept him at high tension. Therefore he had little time to think of Tharon Last and the strange life in Lost Valley. Only when he rode between given points, unintent on the land around, did he give up to his speculations. At such times his mind invariably went back to that first day at Baston’s steps and he saw her again as he had seen her then, tense, stooping, her elbows bent above the guns at her hips, coming backward along the porch, feeling for the steps with her foot.
Always he saw the ashen whiteness of her cheeks beneath her blowing hair.
Always he frowned at the memory and always he felt a thrill go down his nerves. What was she, anyway, this wild, sweet creature of the wilderness who held herself aloof from his friendship, and said that she was “sworn?”
Kenset, sane, quiet, peace loving, shook himself mentally and tried not to think of her. But day after day he came down along the edges of the scattered woods where the cattle grazed––on the forest lands––and looked over to where the Holding lay like a greener spot on the green stretches.
He thought of her, living in this feudal hold, mistress of her riders, her cattle, and her wonderful racing horses of the Finger Marks, sweet, fair, wholesome––with the six-guns at her slender hips!
If only he, Kenset, could take those weapons from her clinging hands, could wipe out of her young heart the calm intent to kill!
It was preposterous! It was awful!
Bred to another life, another law, another type of woman, he could not reconcile this girl of Lost Valley with anything he knew.
He went over in his mind again and again the serene calmness of her in his cabin that day of the race with Courtrey, and shook his head in puzzlement.
But why should he trouble himself about her at all?
He had come here in his Government’s service to reclaim its forest, to look after its interest.
Why should he bother with the moral code of Lost Valley?
But reason as he might, the face of Tharon Last came back to haunt him, waking or asleep.
He knew that it troubled him and was, in a way, ashamed. So he worked hard at his tasks, relocated boundaries, marked them with a peculiar blaze in convenient trees which looked something like this:
and set up monuments with odd and undecipherable hieroglyphics upon them.
And with each blaze, each mark and monument and sign, he drew closer in about him the net of suspicion and disapproval which was weaving in Lost Valley, for there was not one but ran the gamut of close inspection and speculation by Courtrey’s men, by the settlers who came many miles over from the western side of the Valley for the purpose, and by Tharon’s riders.
Low mutters of disapproval growled in the Valley.
Who was this upstart, anyway, to come setting signs and marks in the land that had been theirs from time immemorial? What mattered the little copper-coloured badge on his breast? What mattered it that he was beginning to send out word of his desire to work with and for the cattlemen of Lost Valley, the settlers, the homesteaders?
What was this matter of “grazing permits” of which he had spoken at the Stronghold?
Permits?
They had grazed their cattle where and when they chose––and could––from their earliest memory.
They asked no leave from Government.
When Kenset rode into Corvan he was treated with exaggerated politeness by those with whom he had to deal, with utter unconsciousness by all the rest. To cattleman and settler alike he was as if he had not been.
None spoke to him in the few broad streets, none asked him to a bar to drink.
Serene, quiet, soft spoken, he came and went about his business, and sneers followed him covertly.
It was not long after Tharon’s visit to the cabin in the glade, that Kenset, riding alone along the twilight land, passed close to the mouth of Black Coulee one day at dusk. He rode loosely, slouching sidewise in his saddle, for he had been to Corvan for his monthly mail and a few supplies tied in a bag behind his saddle, and he carried his broad hat in his hand.
The little cool wind that blew in from the narrow gorge of the Bottle Neck and spread out like an invisible fan, breathed on
his face with a grateful touch. The day had been hot, for the summer was opening beautifully, and he had ridden Captain far. Therefore he jogged and rested, his arms hanging listlessly at his sides, his thoughts two thousand miles away.
At the mouth of Black Coulee where the sinister split of the deep wash came up to the level, there grew a fringe of wild poplar trees. They were beautiful things, tall and straight and thickly covered with a million shiny leaves that whirled and rustled softly in the wind, showing all their soft white silver sides when the breeze came up from the south as it did this day. There was water in Black Coulee, many small springs, not deep enough nor steady enough to count for water in a range country, but sufficient to keep the poplars growing on the rim of the great wash, to stand them thick on the caving sides. Whole benches of earth with their trees upon them slipped down these sides from time to time, making of the Coulee a mysterious labyrinth of thickets and shelves, of winding ways and secret places.
Kenset had heard a few wild stories about Black Coulee. Sam Drake had talked a bit more than most men of Lost Valley would have talked, and he had listened idly.
Now as he rode up along the levels and neared the dark mouth of the cut he studied it with appraising eyes. It was sinister enough, in all truth, a deep, dark place behind its veil of poplars, secretive, hushed.
The red light that dyed Lost Valley so wondrously at the hour of the sun’s sharp decline above the peaks and ridges of the Cañon Country was awash in all the great sunken cup, save at the west under the Rockface where the shadows were already dark.
Kenset drank in the beauty of the scene with smiling eyes. Already a love for this hidden paradise had grown wonderfully in his heart. He felt as if he had never lived before, as if he had never known beauty.
And so, dreaming a little of other scenes, smiling to himself, he jogged along on Captain and was nearly past the frowning mouth of the Coulee, when there came the sharp snap of a rifle in the stillness, and Captain changed his feet, sagged and quivered, then caught himself and leaped ahead. For one amazed moment Kenset thought the horse was hit. Then, as he straightened in his saddle and dropped his hand to catch up his hanging rein, he looked quickly down. Where he was accustomed to the smooth feel of the pommel beneath his palm there was a sharp raw edge. A splinter of wood stood up and a small flare of leather hung to one side.
A bullet, singing out of Black Coulee, had carried away part of the pommel.
Kenset shut his lips in a new line, gathered up his rein and drew the horse down to a walk with an iron hand.
Slowly, without a backward glance, he rode on across the darkening levels. He was no fool.
He knew he had had his warning.
Very well. He would give back his acceptance of that warning.
He had said to Courtrey that night at the Stronghold that he had come to stay.
No bunch of lawless bullies were going to scare him out.
No other shot followed. He had not expected one.
For a time after that he went about his work as usual. Nothing happened; he had no outward sign of the distaste with which he was regarded by all factions alike, it seemed.
He met Courtrey face to face in Corvan one day and spoke to him civilly, but Courtrey did not speak. Wylackie Bob did, however––a sneering salutation that was a covert insult. Kenset touched his hat with dignity and passed on.
“Of all th’ tenderfeet!” said Baston, watching the small by-play. “I b’lieve you could spit on him, boys.”
“I don’t,” spoke up Old Pete, shuffling by on his bandy legs, “sometimes that quiet, soft-spoken kind rises––an’ then hell’s to pay in their veecinity.”
But Wylackie looked at the weazened snow-packer with his snake-like eyes and snapped out a warning.
“Some folks takes sides too quick, sometimes.”
But Old Pete went on about his business. He knew, as did all the Valley, that a price was on his head with Courtrey’s band for the daring leap which had saved the life of Tharon Last that day in spring.
Sooner or later that price would be paid, but Old Pete was true western stuff. He had lived his life, had had his day, and he was full of pride at the turn of fate which had made him a hero in a way at the end.
All the Valley stood off and admired Jim Last’s daughter.
Pete basked in the reflected light. And Tharon herself had taken his gnarled old hand one day in Baston’s store and called him a thoroughbred.
Folks in Lost Valley were chary of words, conservative to the last degree. That simple word, the handclasp, the look in the clear blue eyes, had been his eulogy.
It was whispered about, as was every smallest happening, and came to the ears of Courtrey himself, who had promised those vague things for the future on the fateful night. But Courtrey was playing a waiting game. He was obsessed with the image of Tharon. Sooner or later he meant to have her, to install her at the Valley’s head. He had always had what he wanted. Therefore, he expected to have this girl with the challenging eyes, the maddening mouth, like crimson sumac.
Ellen?
Already he was setting in motion a thing that was to take care of Ellen.
The thing in hand now was to placate Tharon, the mistress of Last’s, to play the overwhelming lover.
Courtrey knew better than to go near the Holding. Bully that he was he yet had sense enough to know that no fear of him dwelt in the huge old house under the cottonwoods. If Tharon herself did not shoot him, one––or all––of her riders would. The day of the armed band riding down to take her was, if not past, passing fast. He recalled the look of the settlers––poor spawn that he hated––whirling their solid column behind her to face him that day from the Cup Rim’s floor.
No. Courtrey meant to have the girl some day––to hold in his arms that ached for her loveliness, the strong, resistant young body of her––to sate his thief’s mouth with kisses. But he would call her to him of her own will, would taste the savage triumph of seeing her come suing for his mercy.
If Tharon meant to break Courtrey, he meant no less to break her.
Outlawry––mob law––they were pitted against each other.
And, lifting its head dimly through the smother of hatred, of wrong, of repression and reprisal, another law was struggling toward the light in Lost Valley––the sane, quiet law of right and equality, typified by the smiling, dark-eyed man of the cabin in the forest glade.
Courtrey sent word to Tharon––an illy spelled letter, mailed at Baston’s––that he had meant nothing by that race above the Black Coulee, except another kiss. There was Courtrey’s daring in the affronting words.
She sent the letter back to him––riding in on El Key alone––with the outline of a gun traced across it.
“Th’ little wildcat!” grinned the man, “she’s sure spunky!”
* * *
Once again Tharon met Kenset in the days that followed. Riding by the Silver Hollow she stopped one breathless afternoon, drank of the snow-cold waters, shared them with El Rey, dropped the rein over the stallion’s head and flung herself full length on the earth beside the spring. A clump of willow trees grew here, for every spring in Lost Valley had its lone sentinels to call its presence across the stretching miles. As the girl lay flat on her back with her hands beneath her head, she looked up into the blue heart of the arching skies where the fleecy white clouds sailed, and a sense of sweetness and peace came down upon her like a garment.
“You’re sure some lovely spot, Lost Valley,” she said aloud, “an’ no mistake. I know, more’n ever as th’ days go by that Jim Last was only jokin’ when he told me of those other places out below, big as you, lovely as you. It just ain’t possible. Is it, El Rey, old boy?”
And she moved a booted foot to the king’s striped hoof and tapped it smartly.
El Rey, always aloof, always touchy, never sure of temper, jumped and snorted. The girl laughed and crossed her feet and fell to speculating idly about the world that lay beyond Lost Valley. Lit
tle she knew of it. Only the brief words of her father from time to time, the reluctant speech of Last’s riders, for the master of the Holding had laid down the law concerning this.
His daughter was of the Valley, content. He meant her to be so always. The man who had instilled into her young mind a discontent with her environment, a longing for the “flesh-pots” of the world as he had styled it once, would have had short shrift at Last’s. He would have received his time and “gone packing” swiftly.
And Tharon was content.
Barring the loneliness that had come with Jim Last’s death, she was well content.
So she lay by the willows and hummed a sliding tune, a soft, sweet thing of minors and high notes falling, like rippling waters, and lazily watched the high white clouds sail by.
And as she lay she became conscious of something else in the drowsing land beside herself and her horse. She felt it first, this presence––a thin, dim vibration that sang in the earth beneath her. It stopped the wordless song on her lips, stilled the breath in her throat, set every nerve in her to listening, as it were.
Presently she sat up and felt quickly for the gun-butts in their scabbards. Then she parted the willows and looked out over the rolling slopes and levels. True enough. A horseman was coming in from the west, making for the Silver Hollow, but Tharon smiled and her fingers relaxed on the gun. This man rode straight––like a lance, she thought––and his mount was brown, a good-enough common horse, but no steed of Lost Valley.
Captain lacked the fire, the ramping keenness of the Ironwoods, the spirit and dash of the Finger Marks. For a long time the girl in the willows watched them. Then as they came near she rose and caught El Rey’s bridle.
He was no gentleman, this big blue-silver king. He was savage and wild and imperious. He hated other horses with a quick hatred sometimes and had been known to wreak this sudden rage upon them in sickening fury.
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