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 Cañon 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 Cañons. 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 cañons. 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 Cañon 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 Cañons. 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 rever
ence. 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 Cañons 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 Cañon 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 Cañon 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.”
Tharon of Lost Valley Page 18
