Tharon Last and all her followers held themselves in readiness for anything in the days that followed the taking of the herds from Courtrey’s range.

They locked their doors at night, stood double guard at corral and stable. Mothers scattered throughout Lost Valley gathered in their little ones and watched the slopes and levels when their men were out.

But a strange quietness seemed to settle down upon them. That for which they waited did not materialize. Courtrey and his gun men rode into Corvan and up and down the Valley on mysterious missions which were as unsettling as open depredations, but nothing happened. In fact, Courtrey, burning with the new desire that was beginning to obsess him, was working out a new design.

He began to draw away from Lola. His triweekly visits to the Golden Cloud dropped off a bit. He took to drifting about from saloon to 129 saloon, to being less pronounced in his frequenting of one or two places.

His cold eyes, however, set in their narrow slits beneath the heavy brows, picked out every settler that he met and promised vague things for the future. He knew to a man who had ridden up from Last’s that day, 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 with leaping pulse. The memory of that kiss, taken by violence at her western door, was with him night and day. She stood for right and the dignity of order. He meant, for a time, to play her hand.

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

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

But Tharon was busy at the Holding and El Rey stamped and whistled in his paddock. The mistress knew that she had set stern tides flowing in the Valley, that sooner or later they were due to sweep away the peace and quiet that pervaded the cottonwoods and the singing springs. She 130 knew that Courtrey waited, but she made the most of that waiting.

Conford and Billy and the rest of the riders made strong bolts for all the doors of the house, reinforced the fences that held the herds at night, 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 to her calm and happy nature. She read over and over the two or three old books that had been at the Holding since she could remember, made new covers for the tables in the living room, kept the hands of the Virgin full of fresh offerings. But these things staled.

She began to long for the distances, the open spaces, the feel of the swooping stallion under her sailing down the wind. Courtrey or no Courtrey, she could not fight it down. So, on a golden day when all the boys were out with the herds and only the Indian vaqueros left in charge by Conford were at the stables, she flung the big saddle with its silver studs and its sombre stain on El Rey, mounted and went out and away like the wind itself. Not since the day of the raid on Courtrey’s stolen herds had she been on El Rey’s back and the first long leap and drop of the great horse beneath her set the lights to sparkling in 131 her eyes, the blood to burning in her golden cheeks. She lay low on his neck and let him run, and her heart leaped up with lightness as it ever did when she rode in these thundering bursts.

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

Tharon laughed and stroked the king’s neck, thewed like steel beneath her hands. She had no fear of Courtrey and his hired killers. Sooner or later the issue would come, of course. Then she would kill the man as she had promised Jim Last, without a thought.

Nay, she thought of Ellen, fragile white flower, of whom she had heard.

A softening came about her young mouth at thought of her, a shadow flickered in her blue eyes for a moment. Then it was gone and she laughed, a whooping gale of joy, there alone in the green stretches between the earth and sky, with the note of El Rey’s speed steadily rising in her ears.

It beat in her very heart, that singing note. She loved the king as she loved nothing else on earth, save only the memory of her father. 132

She went south toward the Black Coulee and she thanked her stars that her riders were grazing the herds north toward the Cup Rim. Here there was none to say her nay, to urge her with loving solicitude to go back.

The miles sped backward and she scarce noted their travel. She drew the king down a bit, slowed him from the swooping run, set him into the wonderful rock-and-away of the singlefoot and retied the ribbon on her hair. She wore no hat this day and the tawny cloud of her hair fluffed back from her forehead, straining at its bands, its loose ends standing up like fairy stuff all over her head. So, with her two arms held high above her and the reins in her teeth, she rode down by the mouth of Black Coulee––and up from the depths of the rugged wash that split the plain for seven miles there came across her path a man on a great bay horse.

Courtrey on Bolt! She knew the beautiful animal even so far away. It did not need the challenging toss of El Rey’s head, the piercing scream that rang from his open mouth across the silence, nor the sudden lunge and strain against the bit.

That was Bolt, the mighty, and no mistake. None but Arrow carried his splendid head so regally, none other bore so huge a cloud of mane on his arching neck, so long a tail that spread like 133 a fan between his knees 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 plain killing? No, she wanted more than that. She wanted to see him scourged and beaten, humiliated and robbed as he had robbed Lost Valley.

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

There, between her and the Holding, far distant, there were two riders––and they rode bay horses, both!

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

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

Courtrey came rapidly up toward her, swinging a bit to the west. The others, set somewhat apart to right and left, bore down upon her. It looked 134 very much as if they meant to ride her down to the Black Coulee.

Once in its sheltering deep wash she would be helpless, cut off from escape. The Black Coulee went back into the eastern hills, lost itself up in the rugged and torturous clefts and chasms that cut the unknown ramparts, 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 she had some margin. There was space there to swing away from the man in front who came like the wind itself toward her. She caught the seeming of great speed and her heart leaped again.

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

“How do I know?” he had answered. “I know it was speed, an’ that is all.” True enough. It was Bolt, coming like his namesake, down along the sloping stretches.

But a great wave of exultation swept over her. She rose in her stirrups, shook an insulting hand above her, dropped on El Rey’s neck, swerved him east and swept away toward the lifting skirts of the wooded hills. She heard a yell behind her, glanced back and saw that the three Ironwoods 135 were sweeping behind her, closing in together. It was to be a race at last!

At last the whispered comparisons that had stirred under the speech of the Valley concerning the Ironwoods and the Finger Marks was to have justification. For the first and only time, in her knowledge, they were to run.

“All right!” cried Tharon aloud. “Come on, you bastards! It’s the king you come against an’ Jim Last’s blood! You’ll never put a hand on either.”

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 out along the reins and began to call in his ear.

“Yeeoo! Yeeoo! Yeeoo!” she cried, a high, exciting note that keened in the singing wind. And El Rey, ever keen to run for no reason, finding himself called upon, stretched out his great body, dropped low to earth and began to run. The wind cut by Tharon’s face like a knife in the first few leaps.

It shut her eyes in a dozen. She rode and laughed with a half sob in her throat. The thunder of the king’s iron-shod hoofs was in her ears like the roar of the spring freshets when the empty caÑons poured their temporary torrents down the Rockface into the Valley. 136

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

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

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

As her eyes swept into focus behind, the laughter slipped off her lips as 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 137 for the intent of the men who came after her. Not for gun-fire, nor for capture.

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

She leaned down again and called once more into the stallion’s ear and once more the note rose a notch. She felt that great pulsing seeming of reserve. Always when she called there was the answer. The plain swam beneath her like a blur. The thunder of the king’s hoofs was a single note also.

Then Tharon raised her eyes and saw that she had left the open land behind. The mountains were rising swiftly before, she was sweeping up their skirts. Trees flew by. She heard the singing of waters. The forests 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 to be the end of the race? And then, all suddenly, the woods seemed to fall away on either side, a gateway to open up before her. A lovely open glade spread into the heart of the forest and the great king thundered in between the guarding pines. Like a silver flame he shot up the sloping 138 floor, slowed, changed and came to stop before a cabin that sat securely at the glade’s head.

With the crashing pound of El Rey’s ploughing hoofs upon the very stones at the step, a man came quickly from the interior of the cabin and stepped out, his hand lifted.

Tharon Last, her hair beating on her shoulders, her face pale as ashes, her breast heaving, looked back toward the opening in the trees, and saw Courtrey swing in a wide arc and circle past to disappear toward the north.

After him swept his two lieutenants, to fade swiftly from sight behind the 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 eyes were 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 the azure of her eyes, making them strangely exciting in their straight glance.

“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, 139 an icy flood. The words were simple, sincere, unconscious of dramatic effect. They were as final as death itself, and he dropped his eyes unconsciously to the two guns at her hips. He wondered why she had ridden without a shot this 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’ shot my daddy––in th’ back, th’ hound!”

“God!” said Kenset

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

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

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

And what a woman she was! He looked up in her face again and saw there sweetness and strength, and grim purpose beyond his conception. He knew that her words were downright, and that they meant no more to her than duty to be done, 140 a conscience cleared of debt. He glanced at the hand lying so quietly on the pommel and thought of it as stained with blood. At the fancy he frowned and mentally shook himself.

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

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

Tharon sat quietly for a moment and looked down at him. She did not remove her hand from under his, neither did she seem to be conscious of it.

“Why should I?” she asked presently, “you don’t owe me anything. I sent you away from my house. I wouldn’t have come here if I’d known where I was goin’. It was a chance.”

“Granted. And yet I want you to come across my threshold, to sit in my big chair. Will you come?”

Never in her life had the girl heard so low a voice. It was soft and gentle, yet full of a vibrant quality that belied its softness. The man himself was unlike Lost Valley men. He wore the olive drab trousers of the semi-military uniform, the leather leggings, a tan leather belt and a soft 141 woolen shirt of the same drab color. It lay open at the throat, and the base of his strong neck was white as a woman’s. The dark eyes upturned to hers were deep and winning. The dark beard showed through his sharply shaven cheeks where the red blood pulsed, like dusky shadows.

A strange man, surely.

Tharon wondered what made him so different from other men she had known. There was Billy who had come into Lost Valley from somewhere “below,” and Conford, and Curly. Jack Masters had been born in the Valley. So had Bent Smith. These men were her men, like herself and Jim 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, dropped El Rey’s rein, and stepped around his shoulder.

“All right,” she said briefly, “but I won’t stay any longer than I let you stay.”

For the first time Kenset laughed.

“Twenty minutes, then,” he said, “I don’t think you let me exceed that limit.”

He led the way to the door, stepped back and let her enter. As she did so she passed close to 142 him and caught the scent of him, the clean soft 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 long pennants, like captured rainbows, tacked to the rough walls, the soft toned 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 stood and looked all around with that same half-insolent stare which had greeted Kenset at the Holding that memorable day.

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

The man stood in her presence for a moment, thereby giving a subtle effect of deference which was not wholly lost upon Tharon, though she would 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 the interior.

“I am proud of my home, Miss Last,” he said presently. “What do you think of it?”

“I think,” said Tharon slowly, “that it looks like there’s a woman somewhere.”

This time Kenset laughed in earnest, a ringing 143 peal that startled El Rey 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, as you see, and my maps and several more pictures to put up, not to mention some Mexican pottery that I brought from Ciudad Juarez, and my chiefest treasure, a tapestry from France. That last I can’t decide upon. I have two splendid spaces––over there between the northern windows, facing the door, and yonder at the end. Perhaps you will be good 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 your ride.”

“Rested?”

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

Over the excitement had fallen a subtle shade, 144 however, a hush, with the sight of Bolt so close behind El Rey. If it had not been for that grave thing she would have felt like a wound-up spring, intent with energy, filled with action. She was always so when El Rey ran beneath her. And this stranger spoke of rest! Tharon Last could ride all day without 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 in cloth. But first, if you’ll be so kind, I want you to break bread with me. You said we would not be friends. I’m not so sure of that. There is 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 Tharon was 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 I don’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 her refuge. If it had not been for the glade in the pines, she wondered where 145 she would be now––driven deep into Black Coulee, she made no doubt, 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 as kitchen, and took from a curtain-covered set of shelves, a shiny nickel object on spindly legs, which he brought and placed near Tharon on the table.

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

He lifted the lid and filled the small pot, thereby exposed, with water from the bucket on a bench. Then he delved in one of the big trunks 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 with grave eyes. And Kenset kept up a running stream of gay talk all the time. He wanted to make her at ease, to cover the thought of the strain between them, and how much he wanted to drive from his own mind the knowledge that this sweet and wholesome creature was a potential murderer, he did not know. From a can he measured chocolate. From a pan somewhere outdoors he brought milk. Sugar he added carefully as a woman, and presently he spread between 146 them on the table a small repast that was strange to this girl of the wilderness.

He watched her with appraising eyes and saw that there was in her no consciousness of the unusual. She might have sat at meat in the big room 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 was careful not to ask about Lost Valley, to make mention of the circumstances that had brought her to his door. And so an hour passed as if it had been a bagatelle. The afternoon was waning when Tharon rose swiftly and abruptly terminated this first visit inside his home of 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 trunk and this time brought out a thing of rare beauty and value, a large tapestry, some four by six feet in size, a wonderful thing of soft and deathless hues, of cunning distances, of Greek figures and leaning trees, 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 do they make such things?”

“Far on the other side of the world,” said 147 Kenset gently, pleased with the wonder in her wide eyes, the evident and quick realization of beauty.

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

“There,” she said, pointing to the broad expanse between the northern windows, “hang it there.”

“Done,” said Kenset, and went promptly for a hammer.

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

“Wonderful!” he said to himself, “I never knew how lovely it was amid conventional surroundings!”

“Huh?” asked Tharon.

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

“I mean that it looks better here in my cabin than it ever did on city walls.”

“Why?” 148

“Well––I don’t know. Contrast, perhaps.”

Tharon stood a moment thinking.

“Perhaps,” she answered slowly, “yes, perhaps. I guess that’s why you seem so diff’rent to me. Jim Last used to say that was why th’ Valley was 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 naÏve speech, as if she had 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 downright fashion of all her dealings, “I’m afraid you are––are too soft. You don’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 put the last word of condemnation to his estate.

Kenset looked down at his hands, spread them out a bit. 149

“You’re right,” he said shortly, though his voice was still gentle. “I don’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 his eyes once more to hers, “it would have to be––the last extremity, I know.

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

“You call it that? My daddy had his killin’s, but they were all in fair-an’-open. I called him a man.”

There was a ringing quality in her voice, a depth and resonance that spoke of war and heroes. The fire that all the Holding knew was suddenly in her eyes, flashing and flaming. Kenset caught it, and a thrill 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 fell on the cabin and they 150 could hear the singing water running down the slopes.

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––in some manner. I don’t know yet just what you’re here for, nor if you’re Courtrey’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 as you––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 say so.”

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 the pleasant commonplace to the tense and unexpected. It was always so in these strange meetings with the people of Lost Valley, it seemed, as if he was never to find his 151 way among them, the sane and quiet course that he must travel.

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

“Hello, Billy,” said Tharon. “How’s this?”

“Been lookin’ for you,” said the boy. “We saw Courtrey an’ his ruffians ridin’ up east––watched ’em with th’ glass, an’ Anita said you rode south. Thought you might have met ’em.”

“I didn’t meet ’em, so to speak,” she said, smiling, “though if I’d been on anythin’ but El Rey I would. They tried to drive me into Black Coulee.”

“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’ Stronghold bunch.”

The two men spoke, reached to shake each other’s hands, and took a long survey that was mutual. As the two pairs of eyes met, a wall seemed to rear itself between them, a mist, a curtain, something intangible, but there. 152

They looked across the woman’s shoulder, and from that moment she was to stand between, though what there could be in common between the man in the U.S. service and the common rider from Last’s was not apparent. El Rey was eager for flight and by the time Tharon’s foot was in the stirrup he was up on his hind feet, fore feet beating the air, silver mane like a flying cloud. The girl rose with him gracefully, threw her leg across the saddle, waved a hand to Kenset in the door, and in another moment they were gone away down the grassy slope, out through the opening, had stretched away along the oak-dotted plain, swung toward the north, and were out of sight.

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

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

“She wouldn’t shake hands,” he muttered to himself, “and what she said was true as death. She’s sworn––and it is a solemn oath to her. God help the man who killed her daddy!”

Then once more he sighed, unconsciously. 153

“And Lord God help her!” he finished very gravely, “she is so sweet––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 two young creatures atop were free as the summer winds, as buoyant and filled with joy of being. So they shot down along the levels, Tharon holding El Rey up a bit, though it was a man-size job to do so, and Billy’s rein swinging loose on Golden’s neck. They passed the last of the scattered oaks, came out to the green stretches. The sun was swinging like a copper ball above the Wall at the west. Down through the caÑons the light came in long red shafts that cut through the cobalt shadows like sharp lances of fire and reached half across Lost Valley. All the western part of the Valley lay in that blue-black shadow. They could see Corvan set like a dull gem in the wide green country, the scattered ranches, miles apart.

They swung down to the west a bit, for Tharon said she wanted to go by the 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 154 in the widespread landscape they drew rein and dismounted. Here a huge boulder cropped from the plain and under its protecting bulk there lay as lovely a spring as one would care to see, deep and golden as its name implied, above its swirling sands, for the waters were in constant turmoil as they pressed up from below.

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. 155

“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 156 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.