29CHAPTER IITHE HORSES OF THE FINGER MARKS
At Last’s Holding a change had taken place. The sun of spring still shone as brightly, the work of the place went on as usual. The riders went at dawn and came at dusk, their herds lowing across the rolling green spaces, the days were as busy as they had ever been, but it seemed as if Last’s waited for something that would never happen, for some one who would never come. Conford, quiet, forceful, businesslike, carried on the work without a ripple. To a casual eye all things were as they had been. But to the keen eyes in the tanned faces of Last’s riders the change was appallingly apparent. They saw it creep day by day into their lives, felt it in the very atmosphere, and it was grim and promising.
Old Anita felt it and watched with dim and wistful eyes. Pretty young Paula from the Pomo Indian settlement far to the north of the Valley under the Rockface felt it and was more silent,30cat-like of step than ever. José, always full of laughter at his outside work, was sobered.
For this change was not material, but spiritual, and it had to do with Tharon, who was now the mistress of Last’s.
She no longer sang her wordless songs, no longer played for hours on the little old melodeon by the western door. Something had gone from the brightness of her face, a shadow had come instead. She was just as swift and gentle in her care for all the things of every day, as efficient and painstaking, but she did not laugh, and the tiny lines that had characterized her father’s blue eyes, began to show distinctly about her own.
They began to take on the look of great distances, as if she gazed far.
And for exactly three hours each day there could be heard the monotonous bark-bark-bark of the big guns Jim Last had given her in his final hour. To Billy Brent there was something terrible in this. Bred to violence and the quick disasters of the country as he was, he could not reconcile this grim practice with Tharon Last, the sane and loving girl who could not bear the sight of suffering.
“I tell you, Curly,” he complained to his friend of nights when they came in and lounged in the soft dusk by the bunk-house, “it’s unnatural.31Not that I don’t pay full respect to Jim Last’s memory, an’ him th’ best man in all this hell-bent Valley, but it ain’t right an’ natural fer no woman t’ do what she’s doin’. Ain’t she Jim Last’s own daughter already with th’ guns? Sure. Can drive a nail nigh as far as he could. Quick as Wylackie Bob on th’ draw an’ as certain, now. Then why must she keep it up?”
Curly, more silent in his ways but given to thought, studied the stars that rode the darkening heavens and shook his head.
“Let her alone,” he said once, “it was Last’s command, an’ he knew what he was about even if he was toppin’ th’ rise of the Big Divide.
“He said ‘you’ll have to pro––’––you rec’lect? He meantprotectan’ unless I miss my guess, Billy, he’d have added ‘yourself’ if th’ hand of Ol’ Man Death hadn’t stopped his words. Somethin’ happened out there in th’ Cup Rim that day when Last got his that had to do with Tharon, an’ he knew she’d be in danger. Let her alone.”
So Billy let her alone, as did the rest. She went her ways, saw to the garden and made the butter in the cool springhouse, and sat in the window seat in the twilights. She liked to have the men come in as usual, but the talk these times was desultory, failing and brightening with forced topics, to fail again and drop into silence while32the dim red lights of the smokers glowed in the shadows.
Time and again she stirred and sighed, and they knew that once again she waited for Jim Last, listened for the clip-clap of El Rey coming home along the sounding ranges.
Once, on a night when there was no moon and the tree-toads sang in the cottonwoods by the spring, the girl, sitting so in the familiar window, suddenly dropped her head on her knees and sobbed sharply in the silence.
“Never again!” she said thickly from the folds of her denim skirt, “I’ll never see him comin’ home again!”
The riders stirred. Sympathy ached in their hearts, but not a man had speech to comfort her. It was Billy, the impulsive, who reached a hand to her shoulder and gripped it hard. Tharon reached up and touched the hand in gratitude.
It was about this time, when the master of Last’s Holding had lain a month beneath the staring mound under the pine tree out to the east where they had buried Harkness, that José finished a work of art. For many days he had laboured secretly in a calf-shed out behind the small corrals, and in his slim dark fingers there was beauty unleashed. Finest carving he knew, since his forbears, peons across the Border, had spent33their lives upon the beams of the Missions. None had taught José. It was in his blood. Therefore, from a block of the hard grey stone of the region, which was almost like granite, he fashioned a cross, as tall as Tharon herself, struck it out freehand and true, and set upon its austere face fine tracery of vines and Jim Last’s name. He took into the secret Billy and Curly, since these two he was sure of, and together they hauled the huge thing out and set it up.
When Tharon, looking to the east with dawn, as was her habit, beheld this silent tribute to the man she had so loved, she leaned her forehead against the deep window-case and wept from the depths.
Then she went out to see it and with a knife she set her own mark thereon––a tiny cross scratched in the headpiece, another in the arm that stretched toward all that was mortal of poor Harkness.
“Two,” she said, dry-eyed, while the glorious dawn shot up to bathe the world in glory, “full pay for you both.”
El Rey, stamping in his own corral, lifted his beautiful head, scanned the wide reaches that spread away in living green, and tossing up his34muzzle, sent out on the silence a ringing call. He cocked his silver ears and listened. No clear-cut human whistle answered him. Once more he called and listened.
Then he lowered his head and stepped along the fence. His great body, shining like blue satin with a silver frost upon it, gave and lifted with every step. The pastern joints above his striped hoofs were resilient as pliant springs. The muscles rippled in his shoulders, the blue-white cascade of his silver tail flowed to his heels, his mane was like a cloud upon the arch of his neck. He was strength and beauty incarnate, a monster machine of living might.
Unrest was upon him. Life had become stagnant, a tasteless thing. He was keen for the open stretches, honing to be gone down the wind. He fretted and ate out his heart for the freedom of the range. Old Anita, passing at some work or other, stopped and gazed at him for a compassionate moment.
“You, too,grande caballo,” she said, “there is naught but grief at Last’s Holding.Tharone querida” she called into the house, “come here.”
Tharon came and stood in the kitchen door.
“What, Anita?” she asked gently.
“El Rey,” answered the old woman, “he calls and calls and none come to him. He, too, needs35help,Corazon. Why not take him for a run along the plain? It will help you both.”
For a long time the girl stood, considering.
“I have not cared to ride lately, Anita,” she said, “but you are right. El Rey should not be left to fret.”
She stepped back in the house, then came out, and she had added nothing to her attire save her daddy’s belt and guns. Without these she never left the Holding now.
Bareheaded, slender, she was a thing of beauty, and there was a quiet command about her which subdued the great El Rey himself, the proudest horse in all the Valley, outside of Courtrey’s Ironwoods, Bolt and Arrow.
Between these three horses there was much comment and discussion, though they had never been tested out together.
She found a bridle on a corral post, a strong affair of rawhide, heavily ornamented with silver, its bit a Spanish spade. Without this she could not hold the stallion, and he was no pet to come at her caressing call of the double notes.
Only Jim Last himself had ever tamed El Rey to do his bidding by word of mouth. The horse had had one master. He would never have another.
Even now, when Tharon bridled him and36opened the big gate, promising him his long-desired flight, he seemed not to see her, his beautiful big eyes looked through, beyond her, as if he sought another. There was some one for whom he waited, listened.
From a block of wood set in the yard the girl gathered the rein tight in her hand, balanced a moment, and leaped up astride the shining back.
With a snort like a pistol shot El Rey flung up his great head, leaped into the air and was gone. Around the corner of the adobe house he went, out across the trampled yard, and away along the open to the south, running level and free. With the first sink-and-lift Tharon had slipped back a full span. Now she wound her fingers in the white cloud of mane that flailed her face and edged up, inch by inch. When her knees were well up on the huge shoulders that worked beneath them powerfully, she gathered the reins, one in each hand, leaned down along the outstretched neck and let the great king run. The wind sang by her ears in a rising whine, the green prairie was a flowing sea beneath her, the thunder of the pounding hoofs was stupendous music. Tharon shut her eyes and rode, and for the first time since Jim Last’s death a sense of joy rose in her like a tide.
She had ridden El Rey before, many times. She37had felt him sail beneath her down the open prairies and always it was so, as if the earth slid by, as if the note of the wind lifted minute by minute. She had wondered often about this––how long it would continue to rise with El Rey’s rising speed, how long before he would reach a maximum above which he could not go, a place where the singing note would remain fixed.
She had never known him reach that point. Always he could go faster. Always he had reserves.
Far out ahead she saw a bunch of cattle feeding. They were lazily circling in a wide arc, content under the beaming sun. Near them sat a rider on a buckskin horse, Bent Smith on Golden. This Golden was one of the prides of Last’s Holding. Bigger than Drumfire or Redbuck, he ranked next to El Rey himself in speed, for his slim legs, slapped smartly with the distinguishing finger marks on the outside of the knee, were long and shapely, his back short-coupled and strong, his withers low, his narrow hips high. Tharon bore hard on El Rey’s bit, leaned her body to the left, and they swung in toward Bent and Golden in a beautiful sweeping curve that brought the cowboy up in his stirrups with his hat a-wave above him.
“Good girl!” he yelled with leaping gladness38as the superb pair shot by. “Good girl! Go to it!”
Tharon loosed a hand long enough to wave back and was gone, on down the sloping land toward the country of the Black Coulee, her dark skirts fluttering at her knees, the two heavy guns pounding her thighs at every jump.
It was a long time before El Rey came down from his sweeping flight.
He had been too long holden in cramping bars. The free winds and the rolling earth filled him with a sort of madness. He ran with joy and the surety of unbounded power.
The rider, left far behind, watched them anxiously for a time, thought of following, glanced at his cattle, remembered the gun man’s heritage and turned to his business.
The sun was well down over the western Rockface when Tharon and El Rey came back to Last’s Holding. The riders were bringing in the cattle, dust was rising in clouds above the moving masses. From the ranch house came the savory smells of cooking.
NEAR THEM SAT A RIDER ON A BUCKSKIN HORSE
NEAR THEM SAT A RIDER ON A BUCKSKIN HORSE
The stallion was limber as a willow. He tossed his handsome head and his eyes were bright as stars set in his silver face. Life was at high tide in him, flowing magnificently. Tharon, her cheeks whipped into pulsing colour by the wind and the39bounding speed, her tawny mane loosed from its bands and flying in a cloud behind her, smoothed back from her face, looked wild as an Indian. As she drew up and sat watching the work of the evening, she smiled for the first time in many days, and Jack Masters, passing, felt his heart leap with gladness.
When the mistress of Last’s was sad, so were her people.
When the last big corral gate had swung to and the boys turned in to unsaddle, she touched El Rey with a toe and went over among them.
“Line up the horses, boys,” she said, “I want to see them all together once more. Somethin’ came back in me today––somethin’ I been missing for a long time. I’ll be myself again.”
Billy turned Redbuck to face her, dropped his rein. Curly rode up on Drumfire. These two were red roans, dead matches. Bent brought Golden and stood him alongside. From far at the back of the corral they called Conford and Jack, who came wondering, the former on Sweetheart, true sister of El Rey, almost as big, almost as fast, almost as beautiful.
Silver-blue roan, silver-pointed, slim, graceful, springy, she had not a single dark spot on her except the sharp black bars of the finger marks outside her knees.40
“You darlin’!” said Tharon as she wheeled in line.
Then came Jack on Westwind, and he was another buckskin, paler than Golden, most marvelously pointed in pure chestnut brown. His finger marks were brown instead of black––the only horse at the Holding so distinguished, for no matter of what shade or colour, in all the others these peculiar marks were jet black. Five splendid creatures they stood and pounded the ringing earth, tossed their heads and waited, though they had all been far that day and it was feeding time.
Out in the horse corrals there were many more of their breed, slim, wiry horses, toughened and hardened by long hours and daily work, but these were the flower of Last’s, the prized favourites.
For a long time Tharon sat and watched them, noting their perfect condition, their glistening skins, their shining hoofs, many of which were striped, another characteristic.
“I don’t believe,” she said at last, “that there’s a bunch of horses in Lost Valley to come nigh ’em. Ironwoods or anything else––I’d back th’ Finger Marks.”
“So would we,” said Conford quietly, “though we’ve seen th’ Ironwoods run––a little.”
“That’s th’ word, Burt,” said Curly, “a little.41Who of us has ever seen Courtrey let Bolt run like he wanted to? Not a darned one. I’ve seen that big bay devil pull till th’ blood dripped from his mouth.”
“Sure,” put in Masters, “I’ve seen that, too––but I was lyin’ up on th’ Cup Rim oncet, watchin’ a couple mavericks fer funny work, an’ Courtrey an’ Wylackie Bob come along down that way on Bolt an’ Arrow––an’ they wasn’t a-holdin’ them then. Lord, Lord, how they was goin’! Two long red streaks as level as your hand, an’ I swear my heart came up in my throat to see ’em, an’ I almost hollered. It was pretty work––pretty work, an’ no mistake.”
Tharon looked over at him.
“Fast as El Rey, Jack?”
“Who could tell?” said the man. “I know it was some speed, an’ that is all.”
The girl struck a hand on the king’s shoulder so passionately that he jumped and snorted.
“Some day,” she said tensely, “El Rey will run th’ Ironwoods off their feet––an’ I’ll run th’ heart out of their master, damn him! Put th’ horses out. It’s supper time.”
She threw her right limb over the stallion’s neck swiftly and with lithe grace, and slid abruptly to the ground.
As she did so there came the sound of hoofs on42the hard earth at the corner of the house, and a stranger came sharply into sight.
He drew up and nodded. Conford, just turning away, turned quickly back and came forward.
“Howdy,” he said.
The man, tall, lean, dark, returned the salute with another nod.
He was covered with dust, as if he had ridden far and been a long time coming. His clothes were much the worse for wear, but they were mostly leather, which takes wear standing, as it were. The wide hat pulled low over his piercing dark eyes, was ornamented with a vanity of silver.
The riding cuffs at his wrists were studded profusely with the same metal, as was the wide belt that spanned his narrow waist.
He wore a three days’ beard, and a black moustache dropped its long points to the edge of his jaw. Black hair showed beneath the hat. He was a remarkable figure, even in Lost Valley, and he commanded attention.
He carried the customary two guns of the country, and he bestrode a horse that was as noticeable as himself.
This horse was no denizen of Lost Valley. It was an utter alien. Its colour was a dingy black, as if it had recently been through fire, its coat rough and unkempt. Its long head was heavy and43slug-like, its nose of the type known among horsemen as Roman. It was roughly built, raw-boned and angular, and of so stupendous a size that the man atop, who was six foot tall himself, seemed small by comparison.
However, for all its ugliness, it possessed a seeming of vast power, a suggestion of great strength.
The stranger looked the group over with his keen, hard eyes, and spoke in a slow drawl.
“I reckon,” he said, “I’m a-ridin’ th’ wrong trail. I hain’t expected hyar.”
And turning abruptly, without another word, he jogged away around the house and started down the long slope already greying with the coming night.
The foreman and the five punchers clamped over to the corner of the kitchen and watched him in speculative silence. Tharon came along and stood by Billy, her hand on the boy’s arm. To Billy that sober touch confused the distances, set the strange rider dancing on the slope.
“H’m,” said Conford, his grey eyes narrow, “come from far an’s goin’ somewheres. I’ll watch that duck. He looks like he’s a record man to me.”
At supper there was much speculation about the stranger.44
“I’ll lay a month’s pay he come from Texas,” said Billy, casting a side glance at his pal Curly, “them long lankys usually do. An’ somehow it shows in their eyes, sort o’ fierce an’––”
“Billy,” said Tharon severely, “if I was Curly I’d take a fall out of you. He can do it,youknow that an’Iknow it.”
“Thanks, Miss Tharon,” said Curly in his soft Southern drawl, “if you feel that-a-way about it, w’y, I don’t care whatnolittle yellow-headed whipper-snapper from up Wyomin’ way says to th’ contrary.”
Billy was a bit abashed, but he stubbornly supported his contention that the stranger was a bad-man from Texas.
“Plenty bad-men right here in Lost Valley,” said the girl quietly, “an’ th’ breed ain’t dyin’ out as I can see. Th’ settlers need a new leader––now that Jim Last’s gone.” And she fell to playing absently with her fork upon the cloth.
The boys changed the subject hurriedly.
“I found a dead brandin’ fire in th’ Cup Rim yesterday, Burt,” said Masters, “quite a scrabbled space around it. Looked like some one’d branded several calves.”
“Don’t doubt it,” said the foreman. “Careful as we are there’s always likely to be stragglers.45An’ to be a straggler’s to be a goner in this man’s land.”
“Unless he belongs t’ Last’s,” said the irrepressible Billy. “I’ll lay that fer every calf branded by Courtrey’s gang we’ll get back two.”
“Billy,” said Tharon again, “Jim Last wasn’t a thief. Neither will his people be thieves. For every calf branded by Courtrey,one calfwearin’ th’ J. L.––an’ one calf only. We don’t steal, but we won’t lose.”
“You bet your boots an’ spurs throwed in, we won’t,” said the boy fervently.
As they rose from the table with all the racket of out-door men there came once more the sound of a horse’s hoofs on the hard earth outside.
Last’s Holding was a vast sounding-board. No one on horseback could come near without advertising his arrival far ahead.
This time it was no stranger. Tharon went to the western door to bid him ’light.
It was John Dement from down at the Rolling Cove. He was a thin, worn man, who looked ten years beyond his forty, his face wrinkled by the constant fret and worry of the constant loser.
Tonight he was strung up like a wire. His voice shook when he returned the hearty greetings that met him.46
“Boys,” he said abruptly, “an’ Tharon––I come t’ tell ye all good-bye.”
“Good-bye! John, what you mean?”
Tharon went forward and put a hand on his arm. Her blue eyes searched his face.
The man stood by his horse and struck a tragic fist in a hard palm.
“That’s it. I give up. I’m done. I’m goin’ down the wall come day––me an’ my woman an’ th’ two boys. Got our duffle ready packed, an’ Lord knows, it ain’t enough t’ heft th’ horses. After five year!”
There was the sound of the hopeless tears of masculine failure in the man’s tragic voice. His fingers twisted his flabby hat.
“Hold up,” said Conford, pushing nearer, “straighten out a bit, Dement. Now, tell us what’s up.”
“Th’ last head––th’ last hoof––run off last night as we was comin’ in with ’em a leetle mite late. Had ben up Black Coulee way, an’ it got dark on us. Just as we got abreast o’ th’ mouth of th’ Coulee, where th’ poplars grow, three men come a-boilin’ out. They was on fast horses––o’ course––an’ right into th’ bunch they went, hell-bent. Stampeded the hull lot. You know my bunch’d got down t’ about a hundred head––don’t know what I ben a-hangin’ on fer, only a man hates47t’ give up an’ own hisself beat out. An’ my woman––she’s a fighter.
“She kep’ standin’ at my back like, oh, like––well, she kep’ a-sayin’ ‘We’ll win out yet, John, you see. Right’ll win ev’ry time.’ You see we are just ready to get th’ patent on our land. She couldn’t give that up, seems like. All this time gone an’ nothin’ gained. So we ben a-hangin’ on when things went from bad to worse. Th’ herd’s been a-goin’ down an’ down. Calves with their tongues slit so’s they’d lose their mothers––fed up in some coulee by hand an’ branded. Knowed ’em by my own colour cattle, w’ich I drove in here five year ago––th’ yellers.
“Mothers killed outright an’ th’ calves branded. Oh, I know it all––but what could I do? Kep’ gettin’ poorer an’ poorer. Couldn’t afford enough riders t’ protect ’em. Then couldn’t afford any an’ tried t’ make it go as th’ boys got older. Courtrey, damn him, wants me offen that piece o’ land a-fore th’ patent’s granted. Him with his twenty thousan’ acres of Lost Valley now! An’ how’d he get it? False entry, that’s what! How many men’s come in here, took up land, ‘sold out’ to Courtrey an’ went? Or didn’t go. A lot of ’emdidn’t go. We all know that. An’ who dares to speak in a whisper about it? Th’ men that did wouldn’t go––never––nowheres.”48
There was the bitterness of utter defeat and hatred in the shaking voice. The tree-toads, beginning their nightly chorus from the wet places below the cottonwoods, emphasized the dreariness of the recital, the ancient hopelessness of the weak beneath the heel of the oppressor.
Dement ceased speaking and stood in silhouette against the last yellow-and-black of the dead sunset. The protruding apple in his hawk-like throat worked up and down grotesquely.
For a long moment there was utter silence.
Then he began again.
“I knowed I wasn’t welcome in th’ Valley when I hadn’t ben here more’n six months. Th’ first leetle string o’ fence I put up fer corrals went down, mysterious, as fast as I could fix it. Th’ woman’s garden was broke open an’ trampled to dust by cattle, drove in. Winter ketched us with mighty leetle t’ eat in th’ way o’ truck. Next year she guarded it herself some nights, sleepin’ by day, an’ oncet she took a shot at some one that come prowlin’ around. They let her fence alone after that, but what’d they do outside? Killed all th’ hogs we had one night an’ piled ’em in a heap in th’ front door yard! That was hint enough, but I kep’ a-thinkin’ that ef we behaved decent like, an’ minded our own business we sartainly must win out. We did,” he added grimly after a49little pause, “like hell. An’ how many others of th’ settlers has gone through th’ like? We ain’t no tin gods ourselves, I own, but we got t’ fight fire with fire. Only I ain’t got no more light-wood,” he finished quaintly, “I got to quit.”
There was another silence while the tree-toads sang. Then the man held out his hand, hardened and warped with the unceasing toil of those tragic years.
“Good-bye, Tharon,” he said, “I wisht Jim Last was here. With him gone Lost Valley’s in Courtrey’s hand an’ no mistake. He was th’ only man dared face him an’ hold his own. Last’s was th’ only head th’ weaker faction had, its master their only leader. While he lived we had some show, us leetle fellers. Now there ain’t no leader. Th’ ranchers’ll go out fast now. It’ll be a one-man valley.”
In the soft darkness Tharon took the extended hand, held it a moment and laid her other one upon it.
“John Dement,” she quietly said, “I want you to go home an’ bar your house for fight. Fix up your fences, unpack your duffle. In the morning my riders will drive down to your place a hundred head o’ cattle. You put your brand on em. There’s goin’ to be no one-man doin’s in Lost Valley yet awhile––not while Jim Last’s50daughter lives. See,” she dropped his hand and pointed to the east where the tall pine lifted to the stars, “out yonder there’s a cross at Jim Last’s grave––an’ there’s my mark on it. Th’ settlers have a leader still––an’ I name myself that leader. I’m set against Courtrey, now an’ forever. I mean to fight him t’ th’ last inch o’ ground in Lost Valley, th’ last word o’ law, th’ last drop o’ blood, both his an’ mine. You go down among ’em––th’ settlers––an’ take ’em that word from me. Tell ’em Jim Last’s daughter stands facin’ Courtrey, an’ she’ll need at her back t’ fight him every man in Lost Valley that ain’t a coward.”
When the settler had gone, incoherent and half-incredulous, Conford drew a long breath and looked at his mistress in the dusk.
“Tharon, dear,” he said so gently that his words were like a caress “you’re jest a-breakin’ your riders’ hearts. You’re heapin’ anxiety on us mountain-high. Now what on earth’ll we do?”
Young Billy Brent pushed near and slapped a hand against a doubled fist. His eyes were sparkling like harbour lights, his voice was like the sound of running fire.
“Do?” he cried. “Do? We’ll stand behind her so tight they can’t see daylight through, an’ we’ll fight with an’ for her every inch o’ that way,51every word o’ that law, every drop o’ that blood! Who says Last’s ain’t on th’ map in Lost Valley?” Tharon smiled and touched him again.
“Billy,” she said softly, “you’re after my own heart. Now get to bed. I want t’ think.”
52CHAPTER IIITHE MAN IN UNIFORM
Spring was warming swiftly into summer. Where the gently sloping ranges went up in waves and swells toward the uplands at the east, the bright new green had turned to a darker shade. The tiny purple and white flowers had disappeared to give place to sturdier ones of crimson and gold. The veil of water that fell sharply down the face of the Wall for a thousand feet at the Valley’s southern end had thinned to sheerest gauze. In the Cañon Country the snow had disappeared from most of the high points. Red, black, yellow, the great face of the encircling Wall stood in everlasting majesty, looking down upon the level cup of Lost Valley. The unspeakable upheaval of peaks and crags, of cañons and splits and unfathomable depths, was almost a sealed book to the denizens of the Valley. There were those who knew False Ridge.
There were those who said they knew more. Many a man had adventured therein, and few had returned to tell of their adventures. Cañon53Jim had not returned. Not that he was a loss to the community, or that they mourned him, but his absence pointed again to the formidable secretive power of the Cañon Country.
Tharon Last, standing in her western door, could look across the Valley’s deceptive miles and see the huge black seams and fissures that rent the grim face. These splits and cañons were peculiar in that none came down to the Valley’s floor, their yawning doorways being, in every instance, set from two hundred to five hundred feet up the Wall.
Often the girl watched them in the changing lights and her active mind formed many a conjecture concerning them.
“Some day,” she told young Paula, “I’ll go into the Cañon Country and see it for myself.”
“Saints forbid, Señorita!” said Paula, who had no love for the mysterious, and who was more Mexic than Porno, “there are demons and devils there!”
“Yes, I doubt not, Paula,” said Tharon grimly. “They say Courtrey knows th’ Cañons, an’ when he’s there, it’s peopled, an’ no mistake!
“But it must be beautiful––beautiful! Why––there’s a thousand feet of crevasse on every hand, I know, steps an’ benches an’ weathered faces that no man can climb. They say there’s bright waters54that tumble down like th’ Vestal’s Veil and sink into holes without an outlet. Just go away in the rock. There’s strange flowers an’ stunted trees. An’ they tell of th’ Cup of God, a hidden glade so beautiful that th’ eye of man has never seen its like. All my life it’s called me, th’ Cañon Country.
“Don’t you believe, Paula, that there’s somethin’ there for me? Some reason why I know I must some day go into its heart an’ give myself up to it for a time? If I was free,” she finished with a sigh, “if I was my own woman, wholly, I’d go soon. There’s rest an’ peace up there, I know––and a place to think of Jim Last without such bitterness that my heart turns t’ gall.”
She shook her bright head against the doorpost and shut her soft lips into a straight line.
“Nope,” she finished sadly, “I ain’t my own woman yet.”
“Tharon,” said Billy Brent this day, clanking around the corner of the adobe house, his leather chaps flapping with every step, his yellow hair curling boyishly under his hat-brim. “Tharon, I got bad news for you.”
There was genuine distress in his grey eyes.
“Yes?” asked the mistress of Last’s, straightening up.55
“Yes, sir, an’ I hate like hell t’ tell it.”
“Out with it, Billy. What’s wrong?”
“Somebody’s dynamited th’ Crystal Spring in th’ Cup Rim.”
“What?”
The word was in italics. Its one syllable told all one might care to know of the importance of Billy’s news.
“Yes. Opened her up fer two square yards. Spread th’ lovely old Crystal all over th’ range. An’ she’s gone, as sure’s shootin’. Nothin’ but a lot o’ wet an’ dryin’ mud to show for her.”
Tharon drew a long breath.
“Courtrey’s beginnin’,” she said. “He’s heard th’ word I sent th’ settlers. He’s goin’ t’ use th’ tactics now with Last’s that he’s used with every poor devil he wanted to run out of th’ Valley, th’ tactics he darsent use while Jim Last lived. Well––go send Conford to me, Billy.”
The girl sat down in the doorway and gazed sombrely out over the summer land.
When her foreman came and stood before her, a slim, efficient figure, dark-faced and quiet, she had already made up her mind.
“Burt,” she said swiftly, “drive th’ cattle down from th’ Cup Rim right away. We’ll run those two bunches under Blue Pine an’ Nick Bob out toward th’ Black Coulee. Tell ’em t’ keep56close t’ th’ others. I trust th’ Indians, but there ain’t no Indian livin’ can meet Courtrey’s white renegades in courage an’ wits. Then we’ll start right in an’ dig a well th’ first well ever dug on th’ open range in this man’s land.”
“Good Lord, Tharon!” said Conford, “A well!”
“Yes. Th’ livin’ water holes have been th’ pride of th’ Valley, I know, but we’ll fix this well of ours so’s even Courtrey will respect it.”
There was a grim note in the golden voice.
“How?” asked Conford uneasily.
“Dig it first,” said Tharon, “then I’ll tell you.”
What the mistress said, went. Therefore, the next morning saw a disgusted bunch of cowboys and Indianvaquerossetting to with a will at a spot much nearer the Holding than the Crystal had been, and it took a much shorter time to reach water in a good gravel bed than any one had dreamed.
In three days the thing was done and Conford presented himself, smiling.
“Now, Miss Secrecy,” he said, “come on with th’ mystery.”
Tharon went in to the big desk which Jim Last had used and which was now her own, and returned with a square white slab of pine, elaborately smoothed and finished by José.57
“Read that,” she said, and held it up, face out.
Printed neatly upon its shining surface, in the jet-black ink that old Anita made from the berries of a certain bush which grew at the foot of the cliffs across the Valley, were these words:
“This well is planted. I hope it blows up the first thief who tries to destroy it. Tharon Last.”
Conford took the slab, scratched his head, holding his hat between thumb and finger, read it over, read it again, smiled, and then looked up.
“Might work,” he said, “an’ you’re givin’ out your stand an’ knowledge broadcast, ain’t you?”
“Certainly am,” said Tharon briefly. “I said I’d fight, an’ I want th’ whole Valley t’ know it.”
“It does,” said Conford with conviction. “I heard in Corvan yesterday that John Dement has rode th’ range continuous since he finished brandin’ his new herd to tell th’ settlers about it.”
“Good,” said Tharon, “couldn’t be better. There’s got to be a change in Lost Valley sooner or later. Might as well be sooner.”
And with that thought the girl let her quick mind sweep out to take in the future. She sent Conford off to post her placard and herself went rummaging among the possibilities which her defy had placed before her. She knew that Courtrey would be coldly furious. He had lived his life58as suited him, had taken what and where he listed, by fair means or foul, and though every soul in the Valley knew him and his methods, none had spoken the convicting word. It was the pen-stroke at the end of the death-warrant to do so.
She knew that the faction of the settlers hated him and his with a vitriolic passion, that they were in the minority, that they were no tin gods themselves, and that they were being beaten out, one by one.
Year by year Courtrey had added to his vast acreage, and it was a matter of common knowledge how he had done it. He was rich, powerful, bullying, a man whose self-aggrandizement knew no limit, whose merest whim was his law, whose will must not be thwarted. Year by year hisvaquerosdrove down the Wall herds of fat cattle, their brands blurred, insolently raw and careless. Many a hapless man had stood and seen his own stock go by in Courtrey’s band and dared not open his mouth. In fact Courtrey had been known to stop and chat with such a one, smiling his evil smile and enjoying the helpless chagrin of his victim.
“Insolent ruffian!” muttered Tharon this day, frowning above her daddy’s pipes on the desk top. “He’s goin’ t’ get one run for his money59from now till one of us is whipped. It may be me, but I’ll leave my mark on him, so help me!
“Straight killin’s too good for him. I want to smash him first.”
“Tharon, miCorazon,” said Anita, stopping soft-foot beside her, “it is bad for one to talk so, to himself. The Evil One works on the mind that way.”
Tharon laughed.
“Perhaps, Anita,” she said shortly, “it is with the Evil One I have t’ do, an’ no mistake.”
The old woman crossed herself and went away, her wrinkled face dim with care. And Tharon dressed herself neatly, put a ribbon on her hair, set her wide hat carefully on her head, buckled on her heavy gun-belt, and went to the corral for El Rey. Her daddy’s saddle was her own now, a huge affair carved and ornamented, profusely studded with silver.
Along the right side below the pommel ran a darker stain, Jim Last’s blood, set before his daughter like a star.
She mounted the silver stallion and went away down along the summer land, a shaft of light shooting through the green of the ranges.
Far over to her left she could see her cattle, beautiful bunches spread like figures in a tapestry.60The figures of her riders were small dots on the outskirts.
El Rey, always hard on the bit, always strong-headed, wanted to run and she swung loose her rein and let him go. But run as he might, there was always in his speed that rising note, that seeming of reserve power.
She passed the head of Black Coulee, swung out across the edge of Rolling Cove, thundered down to the ford of the Broken Bend. Here she let the stallion drink, deep draughts that would have slowed a lesser horse. El Rey went up the bank beyond the ford like a charging engine, squared away and stretched out to finish his run. He was within three miles of Corvan, set like a stone in a smooth green surface, before he came down and lifted his shoulders into his gait. With the first rock and swing of the singlefoot, Tharon smiled and settled herself more comfortably in the saddle. This was joy to her, this beautiful syncopation, this poetic marked time that reeled off the miles beneath her and would scarcely have shaken a pebble from her hat-brim.
As she struck the outskirts of the little town the unmistakable sound of El Rey’s iron-shod hoofs brought heads into doors, children at the house corners to look upon her. She came down the main street at a smart clip, to bring up with61a slide at the hitch-rail before Baston’s store where the monthly mail was handled. There were horses tied there, and among them she saw what caused her to look twice with a narrowing of her keen eyes––a huge, raw-boned, black, rusty and slug-headed, among the Ironwood bays from Courtrey’s Stronghold.
“H’m,” she told herself quietly, “so there’s where he was expected.”
She tied El Rey to himself, far from the rest, for she knew his imperious temper and that trouble would ensue if he was near strange horses.
Then she went into Baston’s with her meal-sack on her arm. This meal-sack was a part of her accoutrement, a regular carry-all for such small purchases as she must take home––a roll of print for Paula, some tobacco for the men, a dozen spools of the linen thread which was so much prized among the women of Lost Valley.
As she stepped in the open door her quick glance went over the big room with a comprehensiveness which catalogued its inmates accurately and instinctively. Courtrey was not there, though his great bay, Bolt, stood outside. However, Wylackie Bob was there. This man, sitting at a canvas covered table in a corner, idly fingering a pack of cards, was not one to be passed over easily. He was notorious.62
Tall, slow of action, sleepy-eyed, he was treacherous as a snake, as swift to move when necessary. He had been known to sit as he was now, idly playing, to leap up, crouch, draw and kill a man, and be down again at his place, idly playing, before the breath was done in his victim.
He was a past-master of his gun, and unlike most men of the time and place, he carried only one.
He was a quarter-blood Wylackie Indian. Near him sat the stranger who had ridden the slug-head black into Lost Valley. They both looked up as the girl entered and regarded her with smiles.
Tharon did not look at them again. She saw, however, that they were together, of one interest. There were two or three of the settlers in the store, Jameson from over under the Rockface at the south, Hill from farther up, Thomas from Rolling Cove. She spoke to these men quietly and noticed with an inward thrill the eagerness with which they responded.
There was an electric something between them which told her that her promise had, indeed, gone up and down the country, that in a subtle, unheralded manner she stood in Jim Last’s place, a head, a leader.
She made her purchases without undue speech,63got two letters in her father’s name––and these brought a smarting under her eyelids––tied up her sack and went out without so much as a glance at the two men in the corner. Laughter followed her, however, which set the red blood of anger pulsing in her cheeks.
At the end of the store porch she came face to face with Courtrey and Steptoe Service, the sheriff of Menlo county. She swung to one side to descend the rough steps, vouchsafing them no word or look, but Service blocked her way. She raised her eyes and looked him full in the face, scanning his coarse red features coolly.
“Well?” she said sharply.
“What’s this I hear, Tharon?” asked Service, “about you a-makin’ threats?”
“What have you heard?” she wanted to know.
“W’y, that you’re a-makin’ threats.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well?”
The sheriff flushed darker.
“Look here, young woman,”––he raised his voice suddenly and on the instant there was a sound of boots on the store floor and the settlers, the two men in the corner, Baston and two clerks came crowding out to hear, “you look a-here––don’t64you know it’s a-gin th’ law for any one t’ make a threat like you done, open an’ above board, in th’ Golden Cloud th’ other night?”
Tharon shifted the meal-sack higher on her left arm. Courtrey’s eyes went down to her right hand and stayed there.
The girl’s upper lip lifted from her teeth in a sneer that was the acme of insult. The fire was beginning to play in her blue eyes.
“Law?” she said. “My God! Law!”
“Yes,law! you young hussy, an’ don’t you fergit that I represent it.”
The girl threw down the sack and flashed both hands on the gun-butts. Courtrey, watching, was half-a-second behind her and stopped with his hands hovering.
“Not much, Courtrey,” she said, “you fast gun man! You’re too slow. An’ this ain’t your game, anyway, not face t’ face. You’re all right on a dark night––an’ from behind. Fine! But you’re a coward. You’re what I called you before––an assassin.”
She was pale as ashes, her eyes narrowed to blazing slits. Jim Last, gun man, was in her like those composite pictures which show the shadow in the substance. There was a gasp from the store porch where Thomas stood with a shaking hand covering his lips. Baston was stuck against65his wall like a leech, rigid. These men knew that she tempted death.
Not a man in Lost Valley could have done it and gotten away with it.
Tharon knew it, too, but she did not care.
“An’ now you know what you are, Courtrey. I’ll tell th’ same to you, Step Service. Law! In Lost Valley? Yes, Courtrey’s law! Th’ law of th’ gun alone––th’ law of thieves––th’ law of murderers. An’ you stand for that, you bet! What were you before you took th’ oath of office? Tell me that! Th’ man who killed old Mike McCrea an’ took his cattle down th’ Wall! Th’ whole Valley knows it––but we’ve never dared to say it before!”
The porch was lined with people now. Soft-footed Indians and Mexicanvaqueros, sprung from nowhere, cowboys, ranchers, women, they came silently up and listened.
The sheriff’s red face was the colour of liver, purple and mottled with bursting rage. His fingers worked at his sides. He set his lips, and his small eyes never left the girl’s face.
Tharon, crouched a bit, her feet apart, her elbows crooked above her hips, her fingers curled on her gun-butts with nice precision, wet her own pale lips and continued:
“An’ who put you in office? That laugh of an66office! Who? Why, Courtrey––th’ biggest thief, th’ coldest murderer in th’ country!Heput you there! An’ what are you good for? My daddy was shot––in th’ back––an’ did you make one inquiry into the murder? Come out to Last’s, even to find a clew? Not you! There’s only one sheriff in this Valley––one bit o’ law that will avenge his death––an’ that’sme! Now, you two fine gentlemen––I’m goin’. There’s my hand! I throw th’ cards on th’ table! Shoot me in the back if you’ve got th’ nerve. Come out in th’ open an’ fight!But you better be quick about it!”
With that she backed slowly along the porch, keeping them in view.
“Get away behind me,” she called. There was a path opened instantly, the sound of shuffling feet. Along the porch she went, step by step, stopping every moment or so to keep close hold on her advantage, every nerve strained, every one of her faculties at the top of its power.
She felt for the step with her foot, went down, backed through the crowd, brought them all in the range of the guns which she flashed out now and held upon them.
She was ashy pale, a flaming, vibrant thing. Not a man there but knew she was more dangerous at the moment than cool Jim Last had ever been, for she radiated hatred of her father’s killer67in every bitter glance. She had none for whom to be cautious. She was the last of her blood. She was efficient, and she knew it.
Courtrey knew it, and felt the sweat start on his skin.
Service knew it, and hated her for it.
As the girl backed clear there came into her vision a strange figure––the straight, trim figure of a man who stood stiffly at attention, where her imperious words had caught him.
He wore a uniform of semi-military style, leather leggings, a flannel shirt of butternut and a smart, tan, broad-brimmed hat.
He, too, came in the range of the travelling guns and waited their pleasure.
Tharon reached El Rey. She stuck her right-hand weapon in its holster, loosed the rein, flung it over the stallion’s head, stepped around his shoulder and mounted deftly and swiftly from the wrong side. It was a pretty trick of horsemanship and showed up her adroitness. As El Rey rose on his hind feet, whirling, that unwavering muzzle whirled also, to keep in line. The king struck into his gait and his rider, facing backward, swung away down the narrow street. Until she was well out of range the tension held.
Then Steptoe Service struck a fist into a palm68and began to swear in a fury, but Courtrey laughed, one of his rare, short bursts of mirth that were more bodeful than oaths.
He turned on his heel and strode back the way he had come.
The stranger in the uniform walked forward, went up the steps, crossed the porch, and, stooping, picked up the meal-sack which Tharon had dropped.
“Will some one kindly tell me who the young lady is and where she lives?” he asked gravely.
Baston, unglued from the wall, spoke up with his usual pompous eagerness.
“Tharon, from Last’s Holdin’,” he said.
“Thanks,” and the man wrapped the sack into a small bundle and tied it with its own string.
He stuck it under one arm and taking out a short brown pipe, proceeded to fill and light it.
Courtrey, halted a few rods away, eyed him sharply.
As he turned, rolling his match to death in his fingers, the sun struck mellowly upon something on his breast, a small, dark copper shield which bore strange heraldry.
At the sight Courtrey’s eyes sought Service’s and held them for a swift, questioning moment.
Strangers in Lost Valley were contraband.
The three settlers looked covertly at each other,69drifted apart, got their horses and presently left town by different ways.
Three hours later these men met by common consent at the head of Rolling Cove and talked long and earnestly of the happening. They knew that Courtrey would never take silently that bitter arraignment, that something would transpire swiftly to show his resentment, to prove his absolute power over Lost Valley.
“’Tain’t Tharon that’ll suffer, even ef he did try t’ shoot her that night in th’ Golden Cloud, because Courtrey wants her himself,” said Jameson quietly, “th’ whole country knows that. There was only one man who didn’t know it, an’ that was Jim Last himself. No, he won’t monkey with th’ Holdin’ yet, not to any great extent. It’ll be us little fellers, us others who he knows would stan’ behind her. Some of us’ll lose somethin’ soon, an’ don’t you forget it.”
“If we do,” said Hill passionately, “it’s time t’ show our hand. We’ve been hounded long enough. Th’ men from Last’s will be with us, we can gamble on that.”
“Yes,” said Thomas, “but it’ll be war. Open war. There’ll be killin’s then.”
Jameson, a quiet man with deep eyes, made a wide gesture.
“What if there is?” he asked, “might’s well be70done in th’ open as in th’ dark an’ unseen. Might better be! I move we ride th’ Valley an’ ask th’ settlers to band together, under Last’s, an’ give our ultimatum t’ Courtrey on th’ heels of this. What say you?”
“I say yes,” said Hill swiftly. Thomas, of less stern stuff, wavered.
“Well, let’s wait awhile. Let’s don’t be too quick. Courtrey now, he’s mighty quick an’ hot. They ain’t no tellin’–––”
“All right,” said Jameson promptly, “suit yourself––we ain’t a-pressin’ no man into this.”
“Why, now, I’m fer it, boys––that is, I’m believin’ it’s got t’ be done, only I counsels time.”
“No time,” cried Hill, “we ben counselin’ time an’ quiet an’ not doin’ anything to stir ’em up, an’ what d’ we get? Cattle stole every spring, waterholes taken an’ fenced fer Courtrey’s stock right on th’ open range, hogs drove off, fences tore down, like pore old John Dement’s an’ some of us left t’ rot every year in some coulee. We done waited a sight too long. Courtrey thinks he owns Lost Valley, an’ he comes near doin’ it, what with his hired killers, Wylackie an’ Black Bart an’ this new gun man that’s just come in. I heered today he’s from Arizona, an’ imported article.”
Jameson turned to him and held out his hand.71
“I’m goin’ to ride tomorrow,” he said.
Hill grasped the extended hand and looked hard in the other’s eyes.
“Me, too,” he said.
Thomas, still of the timid, doubting heart, watched them with a hand over his mouth to hide its shaking.
Without a word the others turned their horses and rode away in different directions. As they went farther from him in the wash of the late light the uncertain hand came down with a jerk. Fear was in his eyes, the deep, quaking fear of the man poor in courage, but he beat it down.
“Boys!” he cried in a panic, “don’t leave me out! For God’s sake, don’t think I ain’t willin’! I’ll be out come day tomorrow!”
The others both stopped and turned in their saddles.
“Glad to hear ye come through, Thomas,” called Jameson, “you ride south along th’ Rockface. You’ll go over Black Coulee way, won’t ye, Dan?”
“I will,” said Hill.
“Good. I’ll go north.”
There was a quiet grimness in the few words, for he who rode north on such an errand tempted fate.
Then the three separated, and there was only72the silence and the red light of the dying day at the head of Rolling Cove.
That same evening Tharon Last sat in her western doorway and watched the sun go down in majesty over the weathered peaks and ridges of the Cañon Country.
Billy Brent lounged on the hard earth beside the step, his fair head shining in the afterglow, his grey eyes upon the girl’s face in a sort of idol-worship.
The curve of her cheek, golden with tan and red with the hue of youth, was more to him than all the sunsets the world had ever seen.
A deep light shone in his young eyes which, had the girl been wise, she might have seen. But Tharon was as elemental as the kitten chasing a moth out by the pansy bed, and could look in a man’s face with the unconscious eyes of a child.
Now she watched the pageant of the dying day in a rapt delight.
“Billy,” she said presently, “I’ve often wondered if there’s another place in all the world as lovely as our Valley. Jim Last told me once that there were places so much bigger out below, that we wouldn’t be a patchin’ to them. Don’t seem like there could be.”
She lifted her slim body up along the doorpost and looked long and earnestly all up and down the73wonderful stretch of country that lay along the Wall from north to south. She could see the tiny dots that went for the different homesteads, scattered here and there. Up at the head there lay, hard against the frowning hills, the squat, wide blur that was Courtrey’s Stronghold. Her lips compressed at sight of it.
“Nope,” she said, shaking her head, “I don’t believe he meant it. He used to tease me a lot, you know. It’s an awful big valley, an’ no mistake.”
The rider, who had drifted up along the Wall five years before, looked down at the playing kitten and smiled with a lean crinkling of his cheeks.
“It’s a sure-enough big place, Tharon,” he said gravely, “an’ it’s lovely as Eden.”
“Huh?” said Tharon, “where’s that, Billy?”
The boy sobered and looked up into her blue eyes.
“Why, Tharon,” he whispered, “that’s where th’ heart is.”
For a moment she regarded him. Then she smiled.
“Billy,” she said severely, “you’re stringin’ your boss. I’m sure goin’ to fire you, some day, like I ben a-threatenin’.”
“Do––an’ hire me over!”74
“Nope.”
The girl shut her pretty lips and the man’s hand crept softly up and touched her wrist where it lay against her knee.
“All right,” he said airily, “gimme my time. I quit.”
There was an odd note in his voice, as if under the play there was a purpose. For a second Tharon held her breath.
“What you mean, Billy?” she asked so sharply that the boy jumped.
Then he laughed, still in that light fashion.
“What I said,” he affirmed doggedly.
But the mistress of Last’s took a clutch on his hand that was authority in force and leaned down to look anxiously in his face.
“Why, Billy,” she said with a quiver in her voice, “Last’s couldn’t run without you, boy. An’ what’s more, I thought all th’ riders of th’ Holdin’ would stand by th’ place.”
Billy, fully sobered, straightened up and held hard to that clutching hand. The red light of the sunset flushed his cheeks, but it never set the glow that was in his eyes.
“Don’t you know yet, Tharon,” he said quietly, “when I’m a-jokin’ with you? I’d stand by Last’s an’ you to my last breath. Don’t you know that?”75
For a long moment Tharon regarded him gravely.
“Yes, I do,” she said, “but somehow I don’t like to have you talk that-a-way, Billy. Don’t do it no more.”
“All right,” promised the rider, “if you say so, Boss. Only don’t talk about firin’ me, then. I’m very sensitive.”
And he looked away with smiling eyes to where the deep black shadows fell prone into the Valley from the forbidding face of the great Wall.
Only the towering peaks were alight with crimson and gold, which haloed their bulk in majestic mystery.
Night was coming fast across Lost Valley, while the tree-toads out by the springhouse set up their nightly chorus.
“It’s Eden,” thought the man, “as sure’s th’ world, made an’ forgot with all its trimmin’s––innocence an’ sweetness an’ plenty, an’ th’ silence of perfect peace, not to overlook th’ last unnecessary evil, th’ livin’ presence of his majesty, th’ devil.”
Then the light died wholly and there came the disturbing sound of boots on the ringing stones. The rest of the riders were coming in to claim their share of Billy’s Eden.