So Tharon held him with a strong brown hand wrapped in the chain below the Spanish spade bit in his mouth. She stood beside him, waiting, a slim, golden creature, tawny of hair and blue of eye, and the great horse towered above her mightily, his silver mane blowing up above his arching neck in the little wind that came from the south.
They made a picture that Kenset never forgot, as he swung round the willows and faced them.
El Rey screamed and pounded with his striped hoofs, but Tharon jerked him down with no gentle hand.
“Be still, you bully!” she said sharply.
“Why, Miss Last!” cried the forest man, “I’m so glad to meet you!”
There was the genuine delight of a boy in his voice, and Tharon caught the note. The sweet, disarming smile parted her lips and she was all girl at the moment, artless, innocent, unstained by the shadow of lawlessness and crime that seemed to ever hang above her in Kenset’s thoughts.
“Are you?”
“I certainly am.”
He swung down, gave Captain a drink at the edge of the spring farthest from El Rey, dropped the rein when he had finished, and swung around to face the girl. He took off his wide hat and wiped his forehead with a square of linen finer than anything of its kind she had ever seen.
Then he stood for a moment looking straight into her eyes with his smiling dark ones. It seemed to Tharon that this man was always smiling.
“This is your spring, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Yes. The Silver Hollow. Th’ Gold Pool is farther south toward th’ Black Coulee. There was another one, fine as this, perhaps a better one, up on th’ Cup Rim Range, but Courtrey blew her up, damn him! She was called th’ Crystal.” Kenset caught his breath, mentally, all but physically, and put up a hand to cover his lips.
This was another type of woman from any he had ever met, in truth.
The oath, rolling roundly over her full red lips, was as unconscious as the long breath that lifted her breast at the memory of that outrage.
“We replaced her with a well––an’ it’s a corker. Mebby better than th’ old Crystal, though she was a lovely thing. As clear as––as ice that’s frozen hard without a ripple of white. You know that kind?”
“Yes,” said Kenset gravely.
“Well,” sighed Tharon, “she’s gone, an’ there ain’t no use cryin’ over spilt milk. What you ben a-doin’ sence I helped you hang th’ picture?”
“Won’t you sit down?” Kenset stepped aside. “It is uncomfortable to stand through a visit––and I mean to have a long talk-fest with you, if you will be so kind.”
Tharon flung herself down at the spring’s edge, eased the right gun from under her hip, leaned on her elbow and prepared to listen.
“Fire away,” she said.
Kenset laughed.
“For goodness’ sake!” he ejaculated, “I said visit. That takes two. What have you been doing?”
“Well, everythin’, mostly. Made a new shirt for Billy, for one thing. An’ I showed Courtrey th’ picture o’ this.”
She patted the blue gun that lay half in her lap, its worn scabbard black against her brown skirt.
Kenset sobered at once. As ever when he let his mind dwell on that dark shadow which sat so lightly on this girl, he had no feeling for mirth.
A very real chill went down his spine and he looked intently into her eyes.
“How?” he asked, “what did you do?”
But Tharon shook her head.
“Nothin’ you’d understand,” she said quietly.
“I can show you something you will understand,” he said, and reached for Captain’s bridle. He pulled the horse around and pointed to the saddle horn.
“See that?”
She looked up quickly. With the sure instinct of a dweller in a gun man’s land she knew the meaning of the splintered wood of the pommel, the torn and ragged leather that had covered it.
“Hell!” she said softly, “where did you get that?”
“At the mouth of Black Coulee, at dusk a week ago.”
For a long moment Tharon studied the saddle. Then her gaze dimmed, lengthened, went beyond into infinitude. The pupils of her eyes drew down to tiny points of black against the brilliant blue.
At last she turned and held out a hand, rising from her elbow.
“I beg your pardon, Mister,” she said quaintly, “fer that day at the Holdin’ an’ th’ meal I offered an’ took, an’ fer my words. I know now that you are––that you were––straight. I don’t yet know what you may mean in Lost Valley with your talk of Government, but I do know you ain’t a Courtrey man.”
Kenset took the hand. It was firm and shapely and vibrant with the young life there was in her. He laid his other one over it and held it in a close clasp for a moment.
“I mean only right,” he said, “sanity and law and decency. I think I have a big problem to handle here––aside from my work on the forest––a problem I must solve before I can be effective in that work––and I am more sincerely glad than I can say that my friend, the outlaw, took that warning shot at me. It ruined a perfectly good saddle, but it has made one point clear to you. I am no Courtrey man, and that’s a solemn fact.”
“An’ I ain’t ashamed to say I’m glad, too,” said Tharon.
So, with the sun shining in the cloud-flecked heavens and the little winds blowing up from the south to ruffle the hair at the girl’s temples, these two sat by the Silver Hollow and talked of a thousand things, after the manner of the young, for Kenset found himself reverting to the things of youth in the light of Tharon’s grave simplicity.
They looked into each other’s eyes and found there strange depths and lights. They were aliens, strangers, groping dimly for a common ground, and finding little, though presently they fell once more upon the law in Lost Valley and earnestness deepened into gravity.
“Miss Last,” said Kenset, thrilling at his daring, “why must this law dwell in these?” and he reached a hand to tap the gun on her lap.
“Why? That very question’d show your ignorance to any Lost Valley man. Because it’s all there is. You’ve seen Courtrey. You’ve seen Steptoe Service. Can’t you judge from them?”
“Surely, so far as they two go. A bad man and a bad sheriff. But they are not all the officers of this County. Where and who is your Superior Judge?”
“Poor ol’ Ben Garland. Weaker’n skim milk. Scared to say his soul’s his own.”
There was infinite scorn in her voice.
“No, it’s Steptoe Service, or nothin’.”
Kenset thought a moment.
“Who’s the Coroner?” he asked presently.
“Jim Banner,” she answered quickly, “as straight a man as ever lived. Brave, too. He’s been shot at more’n once fer takin’ exception to some raw piece o’ work in this Valley, fer pokin’ his nose in, so to speak. Jim Last used to say he was th’ only man at the Seat, which is Corvan, you know, of course.”
“District Attorney?”
“Tom Nord. Keen as a razor an’ married to Courtrey’s sister. Now do you see why this is th’ law?” She, too, tapped the gun.
Kenset frowned and looked down along the green range. He thought of the unpainted pine building in Corvan which was the Court House. A strange personnel, truly, to invest it with authortity!
“I see,” he said briefly, “but there must be some way out. This is not the right way, the way that must come and last.”
Tharon’s lips drew into the thin line that made them like her father’s. “It’s th’ law that’s here,” she said and there was an instant coldness in her voice, “an’ it’s th’ law that’ll last until Courtrey or I go down.”
The man, watching, saw that thinning of the lips, the hardening of all the young lines of her face. He knew he had blundered. Talk was cheap. It was action that counted in Lost Valley.
With a quick motion he reached over and caught the girl’s hand and drew it to him, covering it with both of his.
Her
eyes followed, came to rest on his face, cool, appraising, waiting.
She was, in all that had counted in his life, crude, untutored, basic.
Yet that calm look made his impulsive action seem unpardonable in the next second. However a warm surge of feeling shot through him with the quiet resting of that firm brown hand between his own, and he held it tighter. Kenset had thought he was sophisticated, that little or nothing could stir him deeply––not since Ethel Van Riper had gone to Europe as the bride of the old Count of Easthaven. That had been four years back. He had been pretty young then, but the young feel deeply.
Now he held a gun woman’s hand in the thin shade of a willow clump in the heart of Lost Valley––and the blood surged in his ears, the levels and slopes danced before his vision.
“Miss Tharon,” he said, for the first time using her given name, “I beg your pardon. You are strong, simple, serene. You know your land and its ways. I am an alien, an interloper––but I can’t bear to think of you as waiting for the time to kill a man––or to be killed in the killing. It sickens me.”
Tharon snatched her hand from his and leaped to her feet.
“Don’t talk like that!” she cried passionately, “I don’t like to hear it! I thought you were a real man, maybe, but you’re not! You––you’re a woman! A soft woman––I hate th’ breed!”
Her face was flushed, for what reason Kenset, stunned by her vehement words, could not tell. She flung the rein up and followed it, leaping to saddle like a man.
“I tol’ you we couldn’t be friends!” she cried, her eyes blazing with sudden fire, “there ain’t no manner of use a-tryin’.”
Kenset, springing forward, caught El Rey’s bit. The stallion reared and struck, but he held him down.
“There is use, Tharon,” he panted. “It’s vital! Since that day on Baston’s steps, when you backed out past me I have had you in my mind––my thoughts by day and night––there is use, and I’ll keep your hands from blood––Courtrey’s or any other––if it takes my life––so help me God!”
The girl leaned down and her blue eyes blazed in his face.
“An’ make me false to th’ crosses on Jim Last’s stone?” she cried. “No––not you or anybody else––could do that trick! Let go!”
The next moment she had whirled out from the flickering shade of the willows and was gone around toward the north––there was only the sound of hoofs ringing on the earth. Kenset, left alone where the Silver Hollow bubbled softly above its snowy sands, passed a trembling hand across his eyes and stood as in a trance.
What did it mean? What had he promised? What vital emotion had gripped him that his usually quiet tongue had rushed into that torrential speech that dealt with life and death? What was Tharon Last to him?
A figure of the old West! A romantic gun woman with her weapons on her hips! A rider of wild horses!
Slowly, as if he had gained an added weight of years, he reined Captain and swung himself up. He rode east from the spring toward the lacy and far-reaching skirts of the forest, and for the first time he saw the rolling country with tragic eyes.
It held deep issues––life and death and the passing or continuing of régimes and and dynasties––but it was a wondrous country, and, come good or bad, it had become his own. He swung around in his saddle and looked far back across the Valley. He saw the golden light on its uncounted acres, the shadow falling at the foot of the great Rockface, the mighty Wall itself with the silver ribbon of the Vestal’s Veil falling straight down from the upper rim, the distant town, looking always like a dull gem in a dark setting, and a thrill shot to his heart.
Yes, if he lived to do his work in the hidden Valley––if he was shot this night on his own doorstep, it was his country.
He who was alien in every way, was yet native.
Something in the depths of him came down as from far distant racial haunts and was at home.
So he rode slowly up among the scattered oaks with his hands folded on the mutilated pommel, and he knew that his lines were definitely cast.
* * *
Tharon Last rode into the Holding and dismounted in unwonted silence.
There was a frown between her brows, an unusual thing. She turned the stallion into his corral, dragged off the big saddle to hang it on its peg, flung the studded bridle on a post.
The men were not in yet. Far toward the north beyond the big corrals she could see the cattle grazing toward home. A surge of savage joy in her possessions flooded over her. These things were her own. They were what Jim Last had worked for all his life.
Not one hoof or hide should Courtrey take without swift reprisal.
Not one inch should he push her from her avowed purpose––not though all the strangers in the world came to Lost Valley and prated of blood-guilt.
But for some vague reason which she could not have analyzed had she wished, she went to the paled-in garden where the silver waters trickled and searched among the few flowers growing there for some blossom, sweeter, tenderer, more mild and timid than usual for the pale hands of the Virgin in the deep south room.
With the posy in her fingers she slipped quietly to her sanctuary and knelt before the statue, pensive, frowning, vaguely stirred. She whispered the prayers that Anita had taught her, but she found with a start that the words were meaningless, that she was saying them mechanically.
Her mind had been at the Silver Hollow, seeing again the forest man’s dark eyes, so grave, so quiet, so deep––her right hand was conscious as it had never been in all her life before. She heard a strange man’s condemning voice, felt the warmth of his hands pressed upon hers.
The mistress of Last’s shook herself, both mentally and physically, and set herself to resay her prayers.
When she came out to the life and bustle of the ranch house the cattle were streaming into the far corrals under their dust, the riders were shouting, young Paula sang in the kitchen, and Anita passed back and forth about the evening meal.
* * *
There was a slim moon in the west above the Cañon Country. The skies were softly alight, high and vaulted, deep and mysterious and sweet.
World-silence, profound as eternity, hung tangibly above Lost Valley and the Wall, the eastern ramparts of the shelving mountains, the rocklands at the north. There was little sound in all this sleeping wilderness.
Bird life was rare. The waters that fell at seasons from the open mouths of the cañons half way up the Rockface were dried. Down in the Valley itself there could be seen the lights of Corvan which never went out from dusk to dawn. Far to the north a black blot might have been visible with a fuller moon––Courtrey’s herds bedded on the range, the only stock in the Valley so privileged.
Along the foot of the Rockface in the early evening a tiny procession had crawled, three burros, their pack-saddles empty save for a couple of sacks tied across each, and a weazened form that followed them––Old Pete, the snow-packer, bound on his nightly journey to the Cañon Country for the bags of snow for the cooling of the Golden Cloud’s refreshments.
He was a little old man, grotesque and misshapen, yet he followed briskly after the burros, which were the fastest travelers of their kind in the land. He rolled on his bandy legs and kept the little animals on a constant trot with the wisp of stick he carried and the deep, harsh cries that heralded his coming for a mile ahead and sent the echoes reverberating between the cañon walls. A little north of Corvan he had followed the Rockface close for a distance, then suddenly turned back on his tracks and disappeared, burros and all. This was the invisible entrance to the Cañon Country, a narrow mouth that opened sidewise into the very breast of the thousand-foot Wall and led back along a thin sheet of rock that stood between the gorge and the Valley. The floor of this cut or cañon, which was so narrow that the laden burros had a “narrow squeak” to pass, as Pete said, lifted sharply. It rose smoothly underfoot in the pitch darkness, for the cut was roofed in the living rock five hundred feet above, and climbed
for a mile. It was a dead, flat place, without sound, for the footsteps of the burros and the man fell dully on the soft and sliding floor, and it seemed to have no acoustic properties.
At the end of the mile this snake-like split in the solid rock came suddenly out into a broader, more steeply pitched cañon whose walls went straight up to the open skies above. Here there were heaps and piles and long slides of dead stone, weathered and powdered, that had fallen from time to time from the parent walls. This in turn led up and on to other breaks and splits and cuts, all open, all lifting to the upper world, and all as blind and dangerous to follow as any deathtrap that old Dame Nature ever devised. Here, at any crosscut, any debouching cañon, a man might turn to his undoing, might travel on and up and never reach those beckoning heights, seen clearly from some blind pocket he had wandered into, might never find his way back to the original cañon among the continuous cuts that met and crossed and passed each other among the towering points and sheets.
But Old Pete knew where he was going. Not for nothing had he threaded these passages for fifteen years. He knew the Cañon Country for the lower part better than any man in the Valley, if Courtrey be excepted.
So this night he climbed and shouted to his burros and thought no more of the sounding splits, for here the echoes raved, than he would have thought of the open plains below.
He passed on and up to where a certain cut lay full, year after year, of packed and hardened snow. For fifteen years Old Pete had visited this cut, a deeper drop into the nether world of rock, and cut his supplies from its surface. Every season he took what he needed, leaving a widening circle at the edge from which he worked, where the cut he traveled passed the mouth of the pent cañon, and every year the snows, sifting from high above, leveled it again. There was no known outlet for this glacier-like pack, no sliding chance, yet it was always on a certain level––each summer seeming to lose just what it gained in winter. It lay level at the mouth of the passing cut, was never filled higher.
Tharon of Lost Valley Page 12
