Tharon of Lost Valley

  CHAPTER VI

  EL REY AND BOLT

  Tharon Last and all her followers held themselves in readiness foranything in the days that followed the taking of the herds fromCourtrey's range.

  They locked their doors at night, stood double guard at corral andstable. Mothers scattered throughout Lost Valley gathered in theirlittle ones and watched the slopes and levels when their men wereout.

  But a strange quietness seemed to settle down upon them. That forwhich they waited did not materialize. Courtrey and his gun men rodeinto Corvan and up and down the Valley on mysterious missions whichwere as unsettling as open depredations, but nothing happened. Infact, Courtrey, burning with the new desire that was beginning toobsess him, was working out a new design.

  He began to draw away from Lola. His triweekly visits to the GoldenCloud dropped off a bit. He took to drifting about from saloon tosaloon, to being less pronounced in his frequenting of one or twoplaces.

  His cold eyes, however, set in their narrow slits beneath the heavybrows, picked out every settler that he met and promised vague thingsfor the future. He knew to a man who had ridden up from Last's thatday, and he meant that not one should escape full payment--some time.Now he thought of the girl who had defied him and he waited withleaping pulse. The memory of that kiss, taken by violence at herwestern door, was with him night and day. She stood for right and thedignity of order. He meant, for a time, to play her hand.

  Therefore the settlers waited, and held their breath while they didso.

  And Courtrey took to riding much more alone, to watching the slopesand stretches with a hand at his hat-brim, shading his keen eyes. Helooked far and wide in the golden summer land for the sight of asilver horse cutting down the wind with a slim girl in saddle.

  But Tharon was busy at the Holding and El Rey stamped and whistled inhis paddock. The mistress knew that she had set stern tides flowing inthe Valley, that sooner or later they were due to sweep away the peaceand quiet that pervaded the cottonwoods and the singing springs. Sheknew that Courtrey waited, but she made the most of that waiting.

  Conford and Billy and the rest of the riders made strong bolts for allthe doors of the house, reinforced the fences that held the herds atnight, put trick locks on all the gates.

  But the time came when the close retreat became irksome to the girl,and she went from room to room in an uneasiness that was foreign toher calm and happy nature. She read over and over the two or three oldbooks that had been at the Holding since she could remember, made newcovers for the tables in the living room, kept the hands of the Virginfull of fresh offerings. But these things staled.

  She began to long for the distances, the open spaces, the feel of theswooping stallion under her sailing down the wind. Courtrey or noCourtrey, she could not fight it down. So, on a golden day when allthe boys were out with the herds and only the Indian _vaqueros_ leftin charge by Conford were at the stables, she flung the big saddlewith its silver studs and its sombre stain on El Rey, mounted and wentout and away like the wind itself. Not since the day of the raid onCourtrey's stolen herds had she been on El Rey's back and the firstlong leap and drop of the great horse beneath her set the lights tosparkling in her eyes, the blood to burning in her golden cheeks. Shelay low on his neck and let him run, and her heart leaped up withlightness as it ever did when she rode in these thundering bursts.

  IN FACT COURTREY, BURNING WITH THE NEW DESIRE THAT WASBEGINNING TO OBSESS HIM, WAS WORKING OUT A NEW DESIGN]

  There was no other horse in Lost Valley like the great king! NeitherRedbuck nor Golden nor Drumfire! Neither Sweetheart nor Westwind! No,nor any Ironwood Bay that came down from Courtrey's Stronghold, Boltand Arrow not excepted.

  Tharon laughed and stroked the king's neck, thewed like steel beneathher hands. She had no fear of Courtrey and his hired killers. Sooneror later the issue would come, of course. Then she would kill the manas she had promised Jim Last, without a thought.

  Nay, she thought of Ellen, fragile white flower, of whom she hadheard.

  A softening came about her young mouth at thought of her, a shadowflickered in her blue eyes for a moment. Then it was gone and shelaughed, a whooping gale of joy, there alone in the green stretchesbetween the earth and sky, with the note of El Rey's speed steadilyrising in her ears.

  It beat in her very heart, that singing note. She loved the king asshe loved nothing else on earth, save only the memory of her father.

  She went south toward the Black Coulee and she thanked her stars thather riders were grazing the herds north toward the Cup Rim. Here therewas none to say her nay, to urge her with loving solicitude to goback.

  The miles sped backward and she scarce noted their travel. She drewthe king down a bit, slowed him from the swooping run, set him intothe wonderful rock-and-away of the singlefoot and retied the ribbon onher hair. She wore no hat this day and the tawny cloud of her hairfluffed back from her forehead, straining at its bands, its loose endsstanding up like fairy stuff all over her head. So, with her two armsheld high above her and the reins in her teeth, she rode down by themouth of Black Coulee--and up from the depths of the rugged wash thatsplit the plain for seven miles there came across her path a man on agreat bay horse.

  Courtrey on Bolt! She knew the beautiful animal even so far away. Itdid not need the challenging toss of El Rey's head, the piercingscream that rang from his open mouth across the silence, nor thesudden lunge and strain against the bit.

  That was Bolt, the mighty, and no mistake. None but Arrow carried hissplendid head so regally, _none_ other bore so huge a cloud of mane onhis arching neck, so long a tail that spread like a fan between hisknees and almost swept the ground.

  So, Courtrey came out of the Coulee to meet her! He would, maybe,force the issue. But Tharon was not ready for that. What was plainkilling? No, she wanted more than that. She wanted to see him scourgedand beaten, humiliated and robbed as he had robbed Lost Valley.

  So she turned El Rey, though it took the whole strength of her youngarms, and headed him back the way they had come. With the first turnand straightening leap her heart thumped hard against her ribs.

  There, between her and the Holding, far distant, there were tworiders--and they rode bay horses, both!

  She made no doubt that they were Wylackie Bob and Black Bart, on Arrowand Slingshot.

  A sudden mist of fear came across her eyes. A tightening caught herthroat. She looked around the illimitable spaces that stretched awayon all sides. There was nothing in all the spreading plains but thethree riders, sprung from nowhere, it seemed, and herself.

  Courtrey came rapidly up toward her, swinging a bit to the west. Theothers, set somewhat apart to right and left, bore down upon her. Itlooked very much as if they meant to ride her down to the BlackCoulee.

  Once in its sheltering deep wash she would be helpless, cut off fromescape. The Black Coulee went back into the eastern hills, lost itselfup in the rugged and torturous clefts and chasms that cut the unknownramparts, dark with forest and mysterious.

  No! Not the Black Coulee and Courtrey to take her prisoner!

  She looked this way and that. Then she saw that toward her right shehad some margin. There was space there to swing away from the man infront who came like the wind itself toward her. She caught the seemingof great speed and her heart leaped again.

  She recalled the day she had asked Jack Masters if Bolt could run likeEl Rey.

  "How do I know?" he had answered. "I know it was speed, an' that isall." True enough. It was Bolt, coming like his namesake, down alongthe sloping stretches.

  But a great wave of exultation swept over her. She rose in herstirrups, shook an insulting hand above her, dropped on El Rey's neck,swerved him east and swept away toward the lifting skirts of thewooded hills. She heard a yell behind her, glanced back and saw thatthe three Ironwoods were sweeping behind her, closing in together. Itwas to be a race at last!

  At last the whispered comparisons that had stirred under the speech ofthe Valley concerning the Ir
onwoods and the Finger Marks was to havejustification. For the first and only time, in her knowledge, theywere to run.

  "All right!" cried Tharon aloud. "Come on, you bastards! It's the kingyou come against an' Jim Last's blood! You'll never put a hand oneither."

  She struck her heels into El Rey's flanks, leaned over her pommel,wished she was on the king's bare back, reached her hands far outalong the reins and began to call in his ear.

  "Yeeoo! Yeeoo! Yeeoo!" she cried, a high, exciting note that keened inthe singing wind. And El Rey, ever keen to run for no reason, findinghimself called upon, stretched out his great body, dropped low toearth and began to run. The wind cut by Tharon's face like a knife inthe first few leaps.

  It shut her eyes in a dozen. She rode and laughed with a half sob inher throat. The thunder of the king's iron-shod hoofs was in her earslike the roar of the spring freshets when the empty canyons pouredtheir temporary torrents down the Rockface into the Valley.

  She knew he was running as she had never ridden before. She had nevercalled upon him before. It was like being adrift upon the wind. Sheheard the note of his speed rising in her ears. It was as it had everbeen, save that it was a higher note, thinner, sharper. There wasscarce a sense of touch beneath her, a lack of jar, of vibration, soevenly and smoothly did the shining hoofs take the grassy plain.

  Tears were in her eyes. Laughter was on her lips. This was speedindeed! She had a sick longing that Jim Last might see his two lovedones go!

  Then she gathered herself to turn her head across her leaning shoulderand look back.

  As her eyes swept into focus behind, the laughter slipped off her lipsas if wiped by an invisible hand.

  There, the same distance away as when they started, rode Courtrey!

  No farther away!

  Bolt, shining in the sun, was keeping pace with El Rey!

  Farther back--a little farther back--was Arrow, running magnificently,too.

  A greater distance behind the two came Slingshot.

  Tharon was frightened. Not for herself. Not for the intent of the menwho came after her. Not for gun-fire, nor for capture.

  She was afraid for the king! Afraid that Bolt could hold thatwonderful pace! Then a surging rage rose and sickened her.

  She leaned down again and called once more into the stallion's ear andonce more the note rose a notch. She felt that great pulsing seemingof reserve. Always when she called there was the answer. The plainswam beneath her like a blur. The thunder of the king's hoofs was asingle note also.

  Then Tharon raised her eyes and saw that she had left the open landbehind. The mountains were rising swiftly before, she was sweeping uptheir skirts. Trees flew by. She heard the singing of waters. Theforests seemed to come down out of the skies to meet her, dark,forbidding.

  She felt a sense of disaster, of helplessness. Where was she going,she and El Rey, with her enemies behind and coming fast? What was tobe the end of the race? And then, all suddenly, the woods seemed tofall away on either side, a gateway to open up before her. A lovelyopen glade spread into the heart of the forest and the great kingthundered in between the guarding pines. Like a silver flame he shotup the sloping floor, slowed, changed and came to stop before a cabinthat sat securely at the glade's head.

  With the crashing pound of El Rey's ploughing hoofs upon the verystones at the step, a man came quickly from the interior of the cabinand stepped out, his hand lifted.

  Tharon Last, her hair beating on her shoulders, her face pale asashes, her breast heaving, looked back toward the opening in thetrees, and saw Courtrey swing in a wide arc and circle past todisappear toward the north.

  After him swept his two lieutenants, to fade swiftly from sight behindthe shielding forest.

  A grim expression spread over the face of the man at the step as he,too, beheld the end of the vital play.

  Then he looked up at the girl on the silver stallion and his dark eyeswere alight.

  "What's this?" he asked abruptly.

  Then Tharon seemed to become conscious of him for the first time.

  She looked down at him and the black pupils were spread across theazure of her eyes, making them strangely exciting in their straightglance.

  "This," she said, panting, "is some of the law of Lost Valley.Courtrey's law. That is the man I'm goin' to kill some day."

  Kenset felt the blood flow back upon his heart, an icy flood. Thewords were simple, sincere, unconscious of dramatic effect. They wereas final as death itself, and he dropped his eyes unconsciously to thetwo guns at her hips. He wondered why she had ridden without a shotthis time.

  He found his lips suddenly dry and moistened them before he spoke.

  "Why?" he asked, and his voice sounded strange to him.

  "Because," said Tharon simply, "because he kissed me--once--an' shotmy daddy--in th' back, th' hound!"

  "God!" said Kenset

  For a moment there was silence while a bird called sharply from a pinetop and the voice of the little stream became subtly audible.

  It seemed to the man that all his values of life had suddenly becomeshifted, changed. The commonplace had become the unreal, the unlikelythe familiar.

  Guns and threats and racing horses with a woman for prize became onthe moment natural events in this hidden setting.

  And what a woman she was! He looked up in her face again and saw theresweetness and strength, and grim purpose beyond his conception. Heknew that her words were downright, and that they meant no more to herthan duty to be done, a conscience cleared of debt. He glanced at thehand lying so quietly on the pommel and thought of it as stained withblood. At the fancy he frowned and mentally shook himself.

  Then, with an impulse wholly beyond his command, he reached up andlaid his own hand over that one on the pommel.

  "Miss Last," he said gravely, "I have no words to express what I feelthis moment about Lost Valley and its people. Will you get down andlet me show you my house, here in my glade?"

  Tharon sat quietly for a moment and looked down at him. She did notremove her hand from under his, neither did she seem to be consciousof it.

  "Why should I?" she asked presently, "you don't owe me anything. Isent you away from my house. I wouldn't have come here if I'd knownwhere I was goin'. It was a chance."

  "Granted. And yet I want you to come across my threshold, to sit in mybig chair. Will you come?"

  Never in her life had the girl heard so low a voice. It was soft andgentle, yet full of a vibrant quality that belied its softness. Theman himself was unlike Lost Valley men. He wore the olive drabtrousers of the semi-military uniform, the leather leggings, a tanleather belt and a soft woolen shirt of the same drab color. It layopen at the throat, and the base of his strong neck was white as awoman's. The dark eyes upturned to hers were deep and winning. Thedark beard showed through his sharply shaven cheeks where the redblood pulsed, like dusky shadows.

  A strange man, surely.

  Tharon wondered what made him so different from other men she hadknown. There was Billy who had come into Lost Valley from somewhere"below," and Conford, and Curly. Jack Masters had been born in theValley. So had Bent Smith. These men were her men, like herself andJim Last. This man was from "below," too, yet he was unlike.

  While she studied him he met her glance with the same grave look.

  Presently, without a word, she swung herself from the saddle, droppedEl Rey's rein, and stepped around his shoulder.

  "All right," she said briefly, "but I won't stay any longer than I letyou stay."

  For the first time Kenset laughed.

  "Twenty minutes, then," he said, "I don't think you let me exceed thatlimit."

  He led the way to the door, stepped back and let her enter. As she didso she passed close to him and caught the scent of him, the cleansoft smell of shaving soap, blended with the aroma of good tobacco.

  That, too, was different.

  Inside the cabin there was a sense of comfort, of brightness. The longpennants, like captured rainbows, tacked to the
rough walls, the softtoned prints, the gay cushions, all these lent an air of permanence,of home, that she had never before seen in a man's cabin. She stoodand looked all around with that same half-insolent stare which hadgreeted Kenset at the Holding that memorable day.

  Then she went slowly forward and sat down in the big chair by thetable.

  The man stood in her presence for a moment, thereby giving a subtleeffect of deference which was not wholly lost upon Tharon, though shewould have been at a loss to define it.

  Then, he, too, sat down on the edge of the table desk in the corner,and with folded arms waited while she finished her scrutiny of theinterior.

  "I am proud of my home, Miss Last," he said presently. "What do youthink of it?"

  "I think," said Tharon slowly, "that it looks like there's a womansomewhere."

  This time Kenset laughed in earnest, a ringing peal that startled ElRey at the doorstep, and made him clink his bit-chains.

  "There is," said the man, "assuredly."

  Tharon turned her head and looked quickly over her shoulder.

  "Where?" she asked in surprise.

  "There in my big chair."

  "Oh--I meant a woman livin' here, th' woman who owns the pretties."

  And she waved a hand at the gay furnishings.

  "No," said Kenset, "these are all my own pretties. I have books, asyou see, and my maps and several more pictures to put up, not tomention some Mexican pottery that I brought from Ciudad Juarez, and mychiefest treasure, a tapestry from France. That last I can't decideupon. I have two splendid spaces--over there between the northernwindows, facing the door, and yonder at the end. Perhaps you will begood enough to help me choose."

  There was a boyish eagerness in his voice.

  "Will you? After a while, I mean, when you have rested from yourride."

  "Rested?"

  Tharon looked at him in wonder. That ride had been like wine to her, astimulant, a thing that sent the blood pounding in her veins.

  Over the excitement had fallen a subtle shade, however, a hush, withthe sight of Bolt so close behind El Rey. If it had not been for thatgrave thing she would have felt like a wound-up spring, intent withenergy, filled with action. She was always so when El Rey ran beneathher. And this stranger spoke of rest! Tharon Last could ride all daywithout a thought of rest.

  "Sure," she said, "I'll help you if I can. But what's this thing?"

  "A sort of picture," replied Kenset quickly, "a picture woven incloth. But first, if you'll be so kind, I want you to break bread withme. You said we would not be friends. I'm not so sure of that. Thereis nothing like a man's bread and salt for the refutation of logic."

  He slipped off the desk with a lithe rippling of his body, but Tharonwas first on her feet.

  "You mean stay to supper?" she asked decisively. "No, I can't do that.I took back a meal from you. That stan's between."

  "Why, you funny girl," said Kenset, "nothing stands between. And Idon't mean supper, exactly, either. Please sit down."

  Tharon stood, considering. She turned the matter over in her mind.

  She had taken this man's house by storm. It had, indeed, given herrefuge. If it had not been for the glade in the pines, she wonderedwhere she would be now--driven deep into Black Coulee, she made nodoubt, a prisoner to Courtrey.

  "All right," she said abruptly, "I'll stay. But you must be quick. Th'time is goin' fast."

  Kenset went swiftly across the cabin to that part which served askitchen, and took from a curtain-covered set of shelves, a shinynickel object on spindly legs, which he brought and placed near Tharonon the table.

  He struck a match and presently a clean blue flame grew up beneathit.

  He lifted the lid and filled the small pot, thereby exposed, withwater from the bucket on a bench. Then he delved in one of the bigtrunks against the farther wall and brought out a little tin of cakes,such as one could buy in any city of the world.

  All this was absorbing to the girl in the big chair, who watched withgrave eyes. And Kenset kept up a running stream of gay talk all thetime. He wanted to make her at ease, to cover the thought of thestrain between them, and how much he wanted to drive from his own mindthe knowledge that this sweet and wholesome creature was a potentialmurderer, he did not know. From a can he measured chocolate. From apan somewhere outdoors he brought milk. Sugar he added carefully as awoman, and presently he spread between them on the table a smallrepast that was strange to this girl of the wilderness.

  He watched her with appraising eyes and saw that there was in her noconsciousness of the unusual. She might have sat at meat in the bigroom of the Holding for all the flutter there was in her.

  He told her somewhat of himself, of his life in the East, but he wascareful not to ask about Lost Valley, to make mention of thecircumstances that had brought her to his door. And so an hour passedas if it had been a bagatelle. The afternoon was waning when Tharonrose swiftly and abruptly terminated this first visit inside his homeof any Lost Valley denizen.

  "Bring out your picture," she said decisively, "I'll help you hang it,an' then I must go home."

  So Kenset dived once more into the mysterious recesses of the trunkand this time brought out a thing of rare beauty and value, a largetapestry, some four by six feet in size, a wonderful thing of soft anddeathless hues, of cunning distances, of Greek figures and leaningtrees, of sea-line so faint as to be almost lost in the misty skies.

  "Oh!" said Tharon Last with an intake of her breath, "Oh, where dothey make such things?"

  "Far on the other side of the world," said Kenset gently, pleasedwith the wonder in her wide eyes, the evident and quick realization ofbeauty.

  She whirled from it and glanced quickly at the two spaces on therugged walls.

  "There," she said, pointing to the broad expanse between the northernwindows, "hang it there."

  "Done," said Kenset, and went promptly for a hammer.

  When the huge thick mat was securely stretched in place, Tharonhelping to hold it while he pounded in the broad-topped tacks, Kensetstepped back and wondered how he had ever for a moment consideredhanging it in any other spot. The tempered light from the door came inupon it, bringing out each enchanted charm, each tender vista.

  "Wonderful!" he said to himself, "I never knew how lovely it was amidconventional surroundings!"

  "Huh?" asked Tharon.

  The man laughed in spite of himself and turned his eyes to hers, tolose his quick amusement in the earnest blue depths that seemed toquestion him at every angle.

  "I mean that it looks better here in my cabin than it ever did on citywalls."

  "Why?"

  "Well--I don't know. Contrast, perhaps."

  Tharon stood a moment thinking.

  "Perhaps," she answered slowly, "yes, perhaps. I guess that's why youseem so diff'rent to me. Jim Last used to say that was why th' Valleywas so soft-like an' lovely, contrasted by th' Rockface."

  "Do I seem different to you?" asked Kenset quickly. "How?"

  "Yes. I don't know how. You seem soft, like a woman--some women--an'I'm afraid----"

  She stopped suddenly, abruptly halted in her naive speech, as if shehad come face to face with something she had not meant to meet.

  "Afraid?" probed the man gravely, "go on. You are afraid--of what?"

  "No," said Tharon, "I won't say it"

  "Please do. I want to know."

  "Then," answered the girl straightly, after the honest and downrightfashion of all her dealings, "I'm afraid you are--are too soft. Youdon't pack a gun. I'm afraid you wouldn't use it if you did."

  There was a certain finality about the short speech, as if she had putthe last word of condemnation to his estate.

  Kenset looked down at his hands, spread them out a bit.

  "You're right," he said shortly, though his voice was still gentle. "Idon't. And I wouldn't. Not until the last extremity."

  "An' what would that be?" she asked.

  "I don't just know, Miss Last," he answered smiling
and raising hiseyes once more to hers, "it would have to be--the _last_ extremity, Iknow.

  "The hands of all my forbears have been clean, so far as I know. Ihave a deep horror of that imaginary stain which human blood seems toleave on the hands of the killer. Blood guilt."

  "You call it that? My daddy had his killin's, but they were all infair-an'-open. _I_ called him a _man_."

  There was a ringing quality in her voice, a depth and resonance thatspoke of war and heroes. The fire that all the Holding knew wassuddenly in her eyes, flashing and flaming. Kenset caught it, and athrill shot through him.

  "Granted," he said quickly. "But is there only _one_ type of man?"

  "For me," said Tharon, "yes."

  "I'm sorry," said he, and for the life of him he did not know why.

  "So'm I," said Tharon honestly.

  They looked at each other for a pregnant moment, while a silence fellon the cabin and they could hear the singing water running down theslopes.

  Then the girl stooped and rearranged the cushion in the big chair,laid a book more neatly on top of another at the table's edge.

  "Th' time is up," she said, "I must be goin'."

  She straightened her shoulders and looked at him again.

  "I thank you for th' meal," she said, "an' some day I'll return it--insome manner. I don't know yet just what you're here for, nor if you'reCourtrey's man or not--------"

  "Good Lord!" ejaculated Kenset, but she went on.

  "I won't shake hands with you, for whilst I ain't done no killin' yet,I'm sworn--an' Jim Last's hands was red--they would be to such asyou--an' down to th' last drop o' blood, th' last beat o' my heart,I'm Jim Last's girl--th' best gun man in Lost Valley, if I do sayso."

  And she swung quickly to the door.

  Kenset followed her. He longed for words, but found none.

  There was a sudden tragic seeming in the very air, a change from thepleasant commonplace to the tense and unexpected. It was always so inthese strange meetings with the people of Lost Valley, it seemed, asif he was never to find his way among them, the sane and quiet coursethat he must travel.

  As they reached the step at the door sill El Rey stamped and whinnieda shrill blast. In through the gateway between the pines there came arider on a running horse, Billy on Golden who ploughed to a stopbefore them, his grey eyes troubled.

  "Hello, Billy," said Tharon. "How's this?"

  "Been lookin' for you," said the boy. "We saw Courtrey an' hisruffians ridin' up east--watched 'em with th' glass, an' Anita saidyou rode south. Thought you might have met 'em."

  "I didn't meet 'em, so to speak," she said, smiling, "though if I'dbeen on anythin' but El Rey I would. They tried to drive me into BlackCoulee."

  "Hell!" said Billy softly.

  Then the Mistress of Last's remembered her manners.

  "Billy," she said, "I make you acquainted with Kenset of th'foothills. I rode in here just in time to shake th' Strongholdbunch."

  The two men spoke, reached to shake each other's hands, and took along survey that was mutual. As the two pairs of eyes met, a wallseemed to rear itself between them, a mist, a curtain, somethingintangible, but there.

  They looked across the woman's shoulder, and from that moment she wasto stand between, though what there could be in common between the manin the U. S. service and the common rider from Last's was notapparent. El Rey was eager for flight and by the time Tharon's footwas in the stirrup he was up on his hind feet, fore feet beating theair, silver mane like a flying cloud. The girl rose with himgracefully, threw her leg across the saddle, waved a hand to Kenset inthe door, and in another moment they were gone away down the grassyslope, out through the opening, had stretched away along theoak-dotted plain, swung toward the north, and were out of sight.

  The forest man turned away from the doorway, stood a moment lookingover the cabin where the late light was making golden patterns on thegreen and brown rug, sighed and reached for his pipe.

  Somehow all the spirit seem to have gone from the summer day. The longtwilight was setting in.

  "She wouldn't shake hands," he muttered to himself, "and what she saidwas true as death. She's _sworn_--and it is a solemn oath to her. Godhelp the man who killed her daddy!"

  Then once more he sighed, unconsciously.

  "And Lord God help her!" he finished very gravely, "she is sosweet--so wild and spirited and sweet."

  Tharon and Billy let the horses run. Golden was a racer himself,though he could not hold a candle to the silver king, and the twoyoung creatures atop were free as the summer winds, as buoyant andfilled with joy of being. So they shot down along the levels, Tharonholding El Rey up a bit, though it was a man-size job to do so, andBilly's rein swinging loose on Golden's neck. They passed the last ofthe scattered oaks, came out to the green stretches. The sun wasswinging like a copper ball above the Wall at the west. Down throughthe canyons the light came in long red shafts that cut through thecobalt shadows like sharp lances of fire and reached half across LostValley. All the western part of the Valley lay in that blue-blackshadow. They could see Corvan set like a dull gem in the wide greencountry, the scattered ranches, miles apart.

  They swung down to the west a bit, for Tharon said she wanted to go bythe Gold Pool and see how it was holding out.

  "Fine," said Billy, "she's deep as she ever was at this time of year,an' cold as snow."

  Where one tall cottonwood stood like a sentinel in the widespreadlandscape they drew rein and dismounted. Here a huge boulder croppedfrom the plain and under its protecting bulk there lay as lovely aspring as one would care to see, deep and golden as its name implied,above its swirling sands, for the waters were in constant turmoil asthey pressed up from below.

  The girl lay flat at its edge and with her face to the crystalsurface, drank long and deeply.

  As she looked up with a smile, Billy Brent felt the heart in himcontract 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 yousick?"

  "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 wasshattered.

  "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, Ithink," he finished judiciously as he mounted Golden, "that I'vecaught 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 aheadunder its cottonwoods, he let out the young horse for anotherstretch.

  "Bet Golden can beat El Rey up home," he said over his shoulder.

  "Beat th' king?" cried Tharon aghast, "you're foolin', Billy, an' Idon't want to run nohow. I've run enough this day."

  So the rider held up again and together they paced slowly up throughthe gathering twilight where long blue shadows were reaching out totouch them from the western Wall and the golden shafts were turning tocrimson, were lifting as the sun sank, were travelling up and up alongthe eastern mountains toward the pale skies. Soon they rode in purpledusk while the whole upper world was bathed in crimson and lavenderlight 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, inth' 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--lik
e a woman who's just awoman."

  The boy swallowed once, miserably.

  "Always, Tharon," he said huskily, "always--when you want me--or needme--I'll be there, beside you. An' you don't need to even speak a wordto me. I'm like th' dogs--there whether you call or not."

  "I know," said the girl, and reaching over she caught the rider'shand, brown beneath its vanity of studded leather cuff, and gave it alittle tender pressure.

  Billy set his teeth to keep from crushing her fingers, and togetherthey rode slowly up along the sounding slopes to the beautifulsecurity and comfort of Last's Holding.