THE 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, cat-like of step than
ever. Jose, 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. Not 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 meant _protect_ an'
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 while the 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 Jose 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 spent their lives upon the beams of the Missions. None had taught
Jose. 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 his
muzzle, 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, needs help, _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 and opened 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. She had 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 gladness as 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.
[Illustration: 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 the bounding 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.
"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. Who 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 on the 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 and slug-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.
"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, _you_ know that an' _I_ know 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 what _no_ little
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. An' 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 calf_
wearin' 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.
"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
hates t' 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 'em _didn'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."
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
a little 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's daughter
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, every 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."