Tharon turned back and looked long at El Rey. She wondered if she would ever see the great silver-blue stallion again, ever feel the wind singing by her cheeks, ever hear the thunder of his running on the hollow ranges. She saw the stain of Jim Last’s blood on the big studded saddle and a pain like death stabbed her.

“I’ll get him,” she had promised on that tragic day, “so help me God!” and had made the sign of the Cross.

What did she now?

Cast away all certainty of that fulfilment because a man––a man almost a stranger––lay somewhere in the CaÑon Country, crawled somewhere along False Ridge, perhaps, wounded and sick with fever.

“Oh, hurry!” she whispered as Billy made secure his last light knot in the rope gateway across the cut and came to join her.

She scrambled up the bench in the caÑon floor, gained her feet and went forward at a rush. 248

“Steady, Tharon,” warned the rider, “you ain’t used to climbin’. Save your wind.”

It was true advice. Long before the sun was high overhead and day was broad in the painted cracks she had begun to heed it. As she swung up the ever lifting floors, threaded this way and that between the thin intercepting walls that towered hundreds of feet straight up, she cast her wide eyes up in wonder. Always she had watched the CaÑon Country from her western door, always it had held her with a binding lure.

There was that about its mystery, its austere majesty, that had thrilled her heart from babyhood. She had pictured it a thousand times and always it had looked just so––pink and grey and saffron, pale and misty with light when the sun was high, blue and wonderful and black as the luminary lowered, leaving the quick shadows.

Hour after hour they climbed, mostly in silence, speaking now and then some necessary word of caution, of assent. This way and that Tharon turned, but always moving upward in the same direction. From time to time Billy dropped a shred of the red kerchief about his neck, touched the soft walls with the handle of the knife he carried. This left a mark plain as a trail to his trained eyes.

At noon they halted for a little rest. From 249 Tharon’s saddle Billy had taken the flask of water, the tightly rolled bundle of bread and meat in its meal-sack. They ate sparingly of this, drank more sparingly of the water. Billy wondered miserably how soon this last might become more precious than fine gold to him, as he thought of the waterless pockets of the blind and sliding country.

Long before she had rested sufficiently Tharon was up and ready to go. Ever her eager eyes were on the heights above. Ever they turned to the left of the steady line she set herself through and above the winding passes. From time to time Billy looked back. There was not a sign by which one might tell which way he had come if the last mark he made was around the first corner. Hundreds and thousands of spires and faces towered about them. It was a mystic maze of dead stone, cut and weathered by the elements.

“No wonder!” he told himself, “that the Indians call it the Enchanted Land!”

“We’ll reach False Ridge tomorrow, Billy,” Tharon told him confidently, “an’ over it lies God’s Cup. There’s water there––an’ Kenset.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I don’t know. Just feel. He’s there––alive or––” a half sob clutched at her voice––“or dead. But he’s there.” 250

“There’ll be some one with him if he’s alive, most likely.”

“Sure,” said Tharon briefly.

All the afternoon they traveled, sometimes touching with outstretched hands the faces on either side of them, again walking upward through majestic halls, solemn and beautiful. Everything about them was beautiful, the height, the sheer, straight walls, the myriad little blue shadows of tiny projections on their faces. Night came so early in the pits that long before they wished they were compelled to camp. In a blind pocket, walled like a room and round as an apple, they stopped, and Billy spread down the blanket he had taken from Drumfire’s back. This was their only preparation. They had nothing to do, no fire to build, no water to bring.

Tharon, scarcely conscious of the many miles she had traveled since the previous night, sat down upon the blanket, gathered her knees in her arms and stared at the vague blue phantoms of cliffs through the tall straight mouth that led into this sheltered pocket.

Outside the winds were drawing up the caÑons. All day they had walked in this wind. It drew constantly up and down the cuts, this way and that, like contrary currents that met and fought each other, swung in together, went a little way in 251 peace, to again split and surge away through other channels. The echoes were alive with every sound, both of their own making and that of the wind’s. A constant sighing droned through the depths, a mournful, whispering sound that sent the shivers down Tharon’s spine, made her think sadly of all the tragedies she had ever known.

Billy, lying full length beside her, his hands beneath his head, looked up to the narrow blue spot of sky so far away, and thought his own thoughts, and they were not wholly sad.

They fell to talking, softly, in low tones, as if in all the mysterious solitude there might be one to hear, and it was mostly speech of long ago––when Billy had first come into Lost Valley.

After a long and quiet hour the man insisted that she should sleep––that after the hard day and in view of the coming hard morrow, she needed rest.

“But I’m not tired, Billy,” Tharon protested, “no more’n as if I’d been ridin’ all day after th’ cattle.”

But Billy shook his head and hollowed a little place in the soft slide stuff at the Wall’s foot. In this he spread the blanket, folding it half back.

“Lie down,” he commanded, “an’ you’ll be asleep so quick you won’t know when it happens.”

Tharon slipped off her daddy’s belt and 252 stretched her slim young form in the hollow, which fitted it like a cradle. Not for nothing had Billy slept out many a night with nothing save the earth and stars for bed and blanket. The hollow was craftily deepened at hip and shoulder, making a restful couch. As she settled herself therein he lapped the loose half of the blanket over her and tucked it in. Then he took his hat, folded it sharply and placed it under the tawny head.

In its place he would fain have laid his heart.

His fingers, settling the improvised pillow, tangled themselves wistfully in the sun-bright hair, and the boy groaned aloud.

“What’s the matter, Billy, dear?” asked Tharon anxiously, but Billy laughed lightly, a thin sound in the mighty caverns.

“Nothing in God’s world, Tharon,” he lied. “Now go to sleep.”

And he walked away to the tall mouth and sat down with his back against one of the walls. From his pocket he took papers and tobacco and proceeded to roll himself a cigarette.... Dawn showed the narrow doorway strewn with their butts, as leaves strew mountain trails in autumn.

Things were ready to happen in Lost Valley––several things. 253

At the Golden Cloud, Lola looked across the level stretches toward the Stronghold with tragic dark eyes, and smiled at a dozen men whom she scarcely saw. Settlers from all up and down the Wall drifted into Corvan and out again, intent, silent, watchful. Vaqueros and riders from the Stronghold also came and went, as intent, as silent. They passed each other with hostile eyes and trigger fingers were unusually limber. The air was pregnant with change.

Buck Courtrey was conspicuous by his absence.

He was not seen in the town, neither was he at the Stronghold.

There were soft whispers afloat that he was with the Pomos up under the Rockface at the north.

And at the Stronghold, poor Ellen, whiter than ever, more like a broken lily drooping on its stem, trembled and waited for a day that was set soon––too terribly soon!––the day, farcically appointed, for the suit for divorce against her.

Word of this was abroad through all the Valley. Underground speculation was rife as to which of the two women whom Courtrey favoured, Lola or Tharon, was responsible. Some said one, some the other. But Lola knew.

Then came the day itself––a golden summer 254 day as sweet and bright as that one years ago when Courtrey had married Ellen––at this same pine building where the laughable legal farces were enacted now.

Pale as a new moon Ellen rode in across the rolling stretches on one of the Ironwoods, with Cleve beside her. She was spiritless, silent. Cleve was silent, too, though for a far different reason. There was a frown between his brows, a glitter in his narrowed eyes. He was thinking of the only man in Corvan whom he had been able to persuade to present Ellen’s protest––Dick Burtree, one-time lawyer and man of parts in the outside, now a puffed and threadbare vagabond, whose paramount idea was whiskey and more whiskey. But Burtree could talk. Over his mottled and shapeless lips could, on occasion, pour a stream of pure oratory silver as the Vestal’s Veil.

When he was drunk he feared neither man nor devil, and he could speak best so. Therefore Cleve had given him enough money in advance to put him in trim.

“What you think Buck’ll say about me, Cleve?” Ellen asked anxiously. “What’s he mean to accuse me of?”

“Any dirty thing he can trump up, Sis,” said Cleve gravely, “he’s a-goin’ to make it a nasty 255 mess––an’ I wish to God you’d jest ride on down th’ Wall with me an’ never even look back.”

He leaned from his saddle and took the blue-veined hand in his. There was an unspeakable tenderness in his eyes as he regarded his sister. “What you say, Ellen? There’s life below, an’ work an’ other men. You’ll marry again, sometime–––”

But Ellen shook her head with its maize-gold crown.

“Nary other man, Cleve,” she said gently. “I’m all Buck’s woman.”

So they rode on toward the town, and Cleve knew that his last faint hope was dead.

In the town itself there was a stir. Courtrey was there, and Wylackie Bob, and Black Bart and Arizona, a bunch of dark, evil men in all surety.

The Ironwoods were in evidence everywhere, but strange to say, there were no Finger Marks. Not a man from the Holding was in town.

When Cleve and Ellen, alone together, rode in, it lacked yet a half hour of the time set for trial. There was no place to go but Baston’s, so they dismounted at the hitch-rack. Ellen, swaying on her feet, looked all around with her big pale eyes, and when she saw Courtrey some distance away she put a hand to her heart as simply as a hurt child. She was a pitiful creature in her long 256 white dress, for she had ridden in on an old sidesaddle, and she shook out the crumpled folds in a wistful attempt to look proper. On her head was the inevitable sunbonnet of slats and calico.

As she went up the steps of the store with Cleve, Lola of the Golden Cloud, blazing like a comet in her red-and-black came face to face with her purposely. What was in Lola’s head none would ever know, but she wanted to see Courtrey’s wife.

As they met they stopped dead still, these two women who loved one man, and the look that passed between them was electric, deep, revealing. They stood so long staring into each other’s eyes that Cleve, frowning, plucked Ellen by the sleeve and made to push forward.

But as suddenly as a flash of light Lola reached out her two hands and caught Ellen’s in a tight clasp that only women know, the swift, clinging clasp of the secret fellowship of those who suffer.

For one tense moment she held them, while Ellen swayed forward for all the world as if she would sink in upon the deep full breast of this wanton whom she had hated! Then the spell broke, they fell apart with a rush, Lola swung out and went down the steps, while Ellen obediently followed Cleve into Baston’s store, where she sat on a nail keg and waited in a dull lethargy. Outside Courtrey, who had witnessed the thing from 257 across the street, slapped his thigh and laughed uproariously.

It was a funny sight to him. But Lola’s beautiful black eyes blazed across at him with a light that none had ever seen before in their inscrutable depths.

Then the hour struck, and all Corvan, it seemed to Cleve, strung out toward the Court House. This was to be in open court––a spectacle. From somewhere in the adobe outskirts of the town came Ellen’s serving women, most of them, whom Cleve had sent in early in the day. They fell in with her and so, with only the brother who had never failed her and these dusky women of the silent tongues to back her, Ellen Courtrey went to her crucifixion as truly as though she had been one of the two thieves on Golgotha.

At the sight of Courtrey across the big bare room she went whiter than she was, if such a thing were possible, and slid weakly into the chair placed for her.

Then the thing proceeded––swiftly, lightly, with smiles on the faces of the crowd.

Old Ben Garland on the judge’s bench, was furtive, scared, nervous, fiddling with his papers and clearing his throat from time to time.

The county clerk at his table made a great 258 deal out of the ceremony of swearing in the witnesses––Wylackie Bob, Black Bart, Arizona and one young Wylackie Indian woman who worked at the Stronghold. Cleve put up only the serving women whom he had sent in, some seven of them, every one of whom loved their mistress with the faithful fidelity of a dog. These women knew Ellen Courtrey as not even the master of the Stronghold himself knew her. They knew her in her idle hours, at her small tasks, at her bedside, in the loving solicitude she displayed for all of them––and they knew her on her knees in prayer, for Ellen had a strange and simple religion, half Catholic and half Pomo paganism.

In the straight-backed chair they gave her Ellen sat like a statue, sweet and still, a thing so obviously good that it seemed even Courtrey himself must weaken to behold her. But not Courtrey. He was on fire with the vision of Tharon Last on the Cup Rim’s floor, shaking her fist toward him in challenge––at Baston’s steps calling him a murderer and worse––at her western door, striking him from her with the strength of a man. He saw the signal fire flaring across the darkened Valley––and nothing on earth or in Heaven could have softened him to the woman who bound him away from this fighting girl, this gun woman whom he was breaking to him slowly but surely. He visioned 259 her in Ellen’s room at the Stronghold––and the breath came fast in his throat.

And Ellen?

Ah, Ellen was thinking of the long past day when this man had found her in the barren rocklands and taken her with the high hand of a lover. She, too, drifted away from the chilling courtroom with its judge and its petty officials.... And then all suddenly she knew that men were talking––and about her. She heard the drone of question and answer––the rambling statements of the stranger, Arizona, accusing her of strange things––of asking him to take her on rides in Courtrey’s absence––of swinging with him nights in the hammock by the watering trough!

She sat and listened with parted lips and large innocent eyes fixed on the man in wonder. Cleve Whitmore clenched his hands until the nails cut deep, but he held his tongue and controlled his face. Only the blazing blue eyes spoke. She knew that Black Bart tried to tell something, that he made some mistake or other and had to begin all over again. There was a long and tedious time in here when she looked away out the window to where the prairie grass was blowing in the little winds and the shadows of clouds drifted across the green expanse.... She was numb and far away with misery. She did not care for anything 260 in all this world. It seemed as if she was detached, aloof, dead already in body as she was in soul.... And then she heard the drawling voice of Wylackie Bob––and he was saying something unspeakable––about her! She listened like one in a trance––then she struggled up from her chair with tragic long arms extended, and the cry that rang from her lips was piteous.

“Buck!” it pealed across the stillness of the crowded room, “Buck!––it ain’t so! Never in this world, Buck! I ben true to you as your shadow! Before God, it ain’t true!”

There was a stir throughout the crowd, a breath that was audible. There were many of the Vigilantes there––a goodly number, all wondering where Tharon Last was, where Kenset was, where were the riders from Last’s. They had expected, what they did not know––something, at any rate, for this seemed somehow a test, a turning point. But there was nothing. They stirred and waited, like a great force heaving in its bed, blind, sluggish, but wakening.

And Ellen, chilled by Courtrey’s sneering face, the cold disapproval of Ben Garland’s striking mallet, sank back in her chair and covered her face with her shaking hands.... She heard some more awful things––then the voice of Dick Burtree beginning soft, low, silver like running 261 waters. She heard it tell of that far away day of her marriage––of the years that followed––of Courtrey’s love for her––of her own gentleness, her beauty, “like the tender sunlight of spring on the snow and the golden sands”––of her service, her loyalty, her love that had “never faltered nor intruded” that “patient obedience to her master had but strengthened and made perfect.” Of the pitiful thing that her life had been this man made a wondrous thing, all sweet with twilights and haloed with service.

He talked until the courtroom was still as death and the Indian women behind her were rocking in unison of grief. Then she heard questions again and the gutteral soft voices of her women answering––with love and devotion in every halting word. Once again the crowd in the room stirred––and Courtrey’s narrow eyes went over it in that cold, promising glance.

For once in his life Courtrey, the bully, felt a premonitory chill down his spine––because for the first time that promising glance of his failed of its effect! Only here and there along the rows of faces did one cower. There were faces, many faces, that looked back at him with steady eyes and tight lips.... Verily it was time he conquered the riding, shooting, beautiful she-devil who had made this thing possible! The sooner he 262 got Tharon Last away from this bunch of spawn the better. Then he would sweep in with all his old swift methods, only sharper ones this time, and “clean” them all. When he got through it would be a different man’s Valley, make no mistake about that!

Here Ellen looked straight into his eyes and both were conscious of the shock. Ellen wilted and Courtrey frowned and struck a fist against the railing near him.... He looked up and met the hesitating eyes of Ben Garland on the bench and his own hardened down to pin points.

The farce was finished save for the Judge’s decision––Dick Burtree was slumped in his chair, dead drunk and asleep. Wylackie Bob was lighting a cigarette in his brown fingers, a smile on his evil mouth, his slow, black eyes covering the slim white form of Ellen in a speculative way, as if he dreamed of making true his blasphemous lies. Ellen was sweet as a flower in her open-lipped beauty, her panting despair. Wylackie did not notice the slim man beside her whose lips were so tight that they were a mere line across his face. No one at the Stronghold noticed Cleve much.

Then Ben Garland was speaking, and Ellen gathered her dim wits enough to make out that he was saying strange things––awful things––that had to do with Courtrey’s freedom. 263

Then she knew––swaying and groping with her blue-veined hands––that the thing was done––that she was no longer a wife. That she would never again sleep in the bend of Courtrey’s arm as she had slept in those golden days of long ago––that she was an outcast, blackened beyond all hope by the damning and unchoice words of Wylackie Bob.... Then the world faded out for Ellen in merciful blackness.

The petty officials rose with laughter and clanking of boots on the board floors––the crowd filed out in a striking silence. Never before had a crowd in Lost Valley gone out from a courtroom in that strange and bodeful silence.

The sight of Ellen lying white and limp across Cleve Whitmore’s shoulder like a sack of grain, as he passed out with the moving mass, had an odd effect. It was partly the white dress that did it––and the time was ripe.

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!” 264

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. 265

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. 266

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 267 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 268 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 269 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 270 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 reverence. 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. 271

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, 272 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 273 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.” 274

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 275 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, 276 “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.”