EL REY AND BOLT
Tharon Last and all her followers held themselves in readiness for
anything in the days that followed the taking of the herds from
Courtrey's range.
They locked their doors at night, stood double guard at corral and
stable. Mothers scattered throughout Lost Valley gathered in their
little ones and watched the slopes and levels when their men were
out.
But a strange quietness seemed to settle down upon them. That for
which they waited did not materialize. Courtrey and his gun men rode
into Corvan and up and down the Valley on mysterious missions which
were as unsettling as open depredations, but nothing happened. In
fact, Courtrey, burning with the new desire that was beginning to
obsess him, was working out a new design.
He began to draw away from Lola. His triweekly visits to the Golden
Cloud dropped off a bit. He took to drifting about from saloon to
saloon, to being less pronounced in his frequenting of one or two
places.
His cold eyes, however, set in their narrow slits beneath the heavy
brows, picked out every settler that he met and promised vague things
for the future. He knew to a man who had ridden up from Last's that
day, and he meant that not one should escape full payment--some time.
Now he thought of the girl who had defied him and he waited with
leaping pulse. The memory of that kiss, taken by violence at her
western door, was with him night and day. She stood for right and the
dignity of order. He meant, for a time, to play her hand.
Therefore the settlers waited, and held their breath while they did
so.
And Courtrey took to riding much more alone, to watching the slopes
and stretches with a hand at his hat-brim, shading his keen eyes. He
looked far and wide in the golden summer land for the sight of a
silver horse cutting down the wind with a slim girl in saddle.
But Tharon was busy at the Holding and El Rey stamped and whistled in
his paddock. The mistress knew that she had set stern tides flowing in
the Valley, that sooner or later they were due to sweep away the peace
and quiet that pervaded the cottonwoods and the singing springs. She
knew that Courtrey waited, but she made the most of that waiting.
Conford and Billy and the rest of the riders made strong bolts for all
the doors of the house, reinforced the fences that held the herds at
night, put trick locks on all the gates.
But the time came when the close retreat became irksome to the girl,
and she went from room to room in an uneasiness that was foreign to
her calm and happy nature. She read over and over the two or three old
books that had been at the Holding since she could remember, made new
covers for the tables in the living room, kept the hands of the Virgin
full of fresh offerings. But these things staled.
She began to long for the distances, the open spaces, the feel of the
swooping stallion under her sailing down the wind. Courtrey or no
Courtrey, she could not fight it down. So, on a golden day when all
the boys were out with the herds and only the Indian _vaqueros_ left
in charge by Conford were at the stables, she flung the big saddle
with its silver studs and its sombre stain on El Rey, mounted and went
out and away like the wind itself. Not since the day of the raid on
Courtrey's stolen herds had she been on El Rey's back and the first
long leap and drop of the great horse beneath her set the lights to
sparkling in her eyes, the blood to burning in her golden cheeks. She
lay low on his neck and let him run, and her heart leaped up with
lightness as it ever did when she rode in these thundering bursts.
[Illustration: IN FACT COURTREY, BURNING WITH THE NEW DESIRE THAT WAS
BEGINNING TO OBSESS HIM, WAS WORKING OUT A NEW DESIGN]
There was no other horse in Lost Valley like the great king! Neither
Redbuck nor Golden nor Drumfire! Neither Sweetheart nor Westwind! No,
nor any Ironwood Bay that came down from Courtrey's Stronghold, Bolt
and Arrow not excepted.
Tharon laughed and stroked the king's neck, thewed like steel beneath
her hands. She had no fear of Courtrey and his hired killers. Sooner
or later the issue would come, of course. Then she would kill the man
as she had promised Jim Last, without a thought.
Nay, she thought of Ellen, fragile white flower, of whom she had
heard.
A softening came about her young mouth at thought of her, a shadow
flickered in her blue eyes for a moment. Then it was gone and she
laughed, a whooping gale of joy, there alone in the green stretches
between the earth and sky, with the note of El Rey's speed steadily
rising in her ears.
It beat in her very heart, that singing note. She loved the king as
she loved nothing else on earth, save only the memory of her father.
She went south toward the Black Coulee and she thanked her stars that
her riders were grazing the herds north toward the Cup Rim. Here there
was none to say her nay, to urge her with loving solicitude to go
back.
The miles sped backward and she scarce noted their travel. She drew
the king down a bit, slowed him from the swooping run, set him into
the wonderful rock-and-away of the singlefoot and retied the ribbon on
her hair. She wore no hat this day and the tawny cloud of her hair
fluffed back from her forehead, straining at its bands, its loose ends
standing up like fairy stuff all over her head. So, with her two arms
held high above her and the reins in her teeth, she rode down by the
mouth of Black Coulee--and up from the depths of the rugged wash that
split the plain for seven miles there came across her path a man on a
great bay horse.
Courtrey on Bolt! She knew the beautiful animal even so far away. It
did not need the challenging toss of El Rey's head, the piercing
scream that rang from his open mouth across the silence, nor the
sudden lunge and strain against the bit.
That was Bolt, the mighty, and no mistake. None but Arrow carried his
splendid head so regally, _none_ other bore so huge a cloud of mane on
his arching neck, so long a tail that spread like a fan between his
knees and almost swept the ground.
So, Courtrey came out of the Coulee to meet her! He would, maybe,
force the issue. But Tharon was not ready for that. What was plain
killing? No, she wanted more than that. She wanted to see him scourged
and beaten, humiliated and robbed as he had robbed Lost Valley.
So she turned El Rey, though it took the whole strength of her young
arms, and headed him back the way they had come. With the first turn
and straightening leap her heart thumped hard against her ribs.
There, between her and the Holding, far distant, there were two
riders--and they rode bay horses, both!
She made no doubt that they were Wylackie Bob and Black Bart, on Arrow
and Slingshot.
A sudden mist of fear came across her eyes. A tightening caught her
throat. She looked around the illimitable spaces that stretched away
on all sides. There was nothing in all the spreading plains but the
three riders, sprung from nowhere, it seemed, and herself.
Courtrey came rapidly up toward her, swinging a bit to the west. The
others, set somewhat apart to right and left, bore down upon her. It
looked very much as if they meant to ride her down to the Black
Coulee.
Once in its sheltering deep wash she would be helpless, cut off from
escape. The Black Coulee went back into the eastern hills, lost itself
up in the rugged and torturous clefts and chasms that cut the unknown
ramparts, dark with forest and mysterious.
No! Not the Black Coulee and Courtrey to take her prisoner!
She looked this way and that. Then she saw that toward her right she
had some margin. There was space there to swing away from the man in
front who came like the wind itself toward her. She caught the seeming
of great speed and her heart leaped again.
She recalled the day she had asked Jack Masters if Bolt could run like
El Rey.
"How do I know?" he had answered. "I know it was speed, an' that is
all." True enough. It was Bolt, coming like his namesake, down along
the sloping stretches.
But a great wave of exultation swept over her. She rose in her
stirrups, shook an insulting hand above her, dropped on El Rey's neck,
swerved him east and swept away toward the lifting skirts of the
wooded hills. She heard a yell behind her, glanced back and saw that
the three Ironwoods were sweeping behind her, closing in together. It
was to be a race at last!
At last the whispered comparisons that had stirred under the speech of
the Valley concerning the Ironwoods and the Finger Marks was to have
justification. For the first and only time, in her knowledge, they
were to run.
"All right!" cried Tharon aloud. "Come on, you bastards! It's the king
you come against an' Jim Last's blood! You'll never put a hand on
either."
She struck her heels into El Rey's flanks, leaned over her pommel,
wished she was on the king's bare back, reached her hands far out
along the reins and began to call in his ear.
"Yeeoo! Yeeoo! Yeeoo!" she cried, a high, exciting note that keened in
the singing wind. And El Rey, ever keen to run for no reason, finding
himself called upon, stretched out his great body, dropped low to
earth and began to run. The wind cut by Tharon's face like a knife in
the first few leaps.
It shut her eyes in a dozen. She rode and laughed with a half sob in
her throat. The thunder of the king's iron-shod hoofs was in her ears
like the roar of the spring freshets when the empty canyons poured
their temporary torrents down the Rockface into the Valley.
She knew he was running as she had never ridden before. She had never
called upon him before. It was like being adrift upon the wind. She
heard the note of his speed rising in her ears. It was as it had ever
been, save that it was a higher note, thinner, sharper. There was
scarce a sense of touch beneath her, a lack of jar, of vibration, so
evenly and smoothly did the shining hoofs take the grassy plain.
Tears were in her eyes. Laughter was on her lips. This was speed
indeed! She had a sick longing that Jim Last might see his two loved
ones go!
Then she gathered herself to turn her head across her leaning shoulder
and look back.
As her eyes swept into focus behind, the laughter slipped off her lips
as if wiped by an invisible hand.
There, the same distance away as when they started, rode Courtrey!
No farther away!
Bolt, shining in the sun, was keeping pace with El Rey!
Farther back--a little farther back--was Arrow, running magnificently,
too.
A greater distance behind the two came Slingshot.
Tharon was frightened. Not for herself. Not for the intent of the men
who came after her. Not for gun-fire, nor for capture.
She was afraid for the king! Afraid that Bolt could hold that
wonderful pace! Then a surging rage rose and sickened her.
She leaned down again and called once more into the stallion's ear and
once more the note rose a notch. She felt that great pulsing seeming
of reserve. Always when she called there was the answer. The plain
swam beneath her like a blur. The thunder of the king's hoofs was a
single note also.
Then Tharon raised her eyes and saw that she had left the open land
behind. The mountains were rising swiftly before, she was sweeping up
their skirts. Trees flew by. She heard the singing of waters. The
forests seemed to come down out of the skies to meet her, dark,
forbidding.
She felt a sense of disaster, of helplessness. Where was she going,
she and El Rey, with her enemies behind and coming fast? What was to
be the end of the race? And then, all suddenly, the woods seemed to
fall away on either side, a gateway to open up before her. A lovely
open glade spread into the heart of the forest and the great king
thundered in between the guarding pines. Like a silver flame he shot
up the sloping floor, slowed, changed and came to stop before a cabin
that sat securely at the glade's head.
With the crashing pound of El Rey's ploughing hoofs upon the very
stones at the step, a man came quickly from the interior of the cabin
and stepped out, his hand lifted.
Tharon Last, her hair beating on her shoulders, her face pale as
ashes, her breast heaving, looked back toward the opening in the
trees, and saw Courtrey swing in a wide arc and circle past to
disappear toward the north.
After him swept his two lieutenants, to fade swiftly from sight behind
the shielding forest.
A grim expression spread over the face of the man at the step as he,
too, beheld the end of the vital play.
Then he looked up at the girl on the silver stallion and his dark eyes
were alight.
"What's this?" he asked abruptly.
Then Tharon seemed to become conscious of him for the first time.
She looked down at him and the black pupils were spread across the
azure of her eyes, making them strangely exciting in their straight
glance.
"This," she said, panting, "is some of the law of Lost Valley.
Courtrey's law. That is the man I'm goin' to kill some day."
Kenset felt the blood flow back upon his heart, an icy flood. The
words were simple, sincere, unconscious of dramatic effect. They were
as final as death itself, and he dropped his eyes unconsciously to the
two guns at her hips. He wondered why she had ridden without a shot
this time.
He found his lips suddenly dry and moistened them before he spoke.
"Why?" he asked, and his voice sounded strange to him.
"Because," said Tharon simply, "because he kissed me--once--an' shot
my daddy--in th' back, th' hound!"
"God!" said Kenset
For a moment there was silence while a bird called sharply from a pine
top and the voice of the little stream became subtly audible.
It seemed to the man that all his values of life had suddenly become
shifted, changed. The commonplace had become the unreal, the unlikely
the familiar.
Guns and threats and racing horses with a woman for prize became on
the moment natural events in this hidden setting.
And what a woman she was! He looked up in her face again and saw there
sweetness and strength, and grim purpose beyond his conception. He
knew that her words were downright, and that they meant no more to her
than duty to be done, a conscience cleared of debt. He glanced at the
hand lying so quietly on the pommel and thought of it as stained with
blood. At the fancy he frowned and mentally shook himself.
Then, with an impulse wholly beyond his command, he reached up and
laid his own hand over that one on the pommel.
"Miss Last," he said gravely, "I have no words to express what I feel
this moment about Lost Valley and its people. Will you get down and
let me show you my house, here in my glade?"
Tharon sat quietly for a moment and looked down at him. She did not
remove her hand from under his, neither did she seem to be conscious
of it.
"Why should I?" she asked presently, "you don't owe me anything. I
sent you away from my house. I wouldn't have come here if I'd known
where I was goin'. It was a chance."
"Granted. And yet I want you to come across my threshold, to sit in my
big chair. Will you come?"
Never in her life had the girl heard so low a voice. It was soft and
gentle, yet full of a vibrant quality that belied its softness. The
man himself was unlike Lost Valley men. He wore the olive drab
trousers of the semi-military uniform, the leather leggings, a tan
leather belt and a soft woolen shirt of the same drab color. It lay
open at the throat, and the base of his strong neck was white as a
woman's. The dark eyes upturned to hers were deep and winning. The
dark beard showed through his sharply shaven cheeks where the red
blood pulsed, like dusky shadows.
A strange man, surely.
Tharon wondered what made him so different from other men she had
known. There was Billy who had come into Lost Valley from somewhere
"below," and Conford, and Curly. Jack Masters had been born in the
Valley. So had Bent Smith. These men were her men, like herself and
Jim Last. This man was from "below," too, yet he was unlike.
While she studied him he met her glance with the same grave look.
Presently, without a word, she swung herself from the saddle, dropped
El Rey's rein, and stepped around his shoulder.
"All right," she said briefly, "but I won't stay any longer than I let
you stay."
For the first time Kenset laughed.
"Twenty minutes, then," he said, "I don't think you let me exceed that
limit."
He led the way to the door, stepped back and let her enter. As she did
so she passed close to him and caught the scent of him, the clean
soft smell of shaving soap, blended with the aroma of good tobacco.
That, too, was different.
Inside the cabin there was a sense of comfort, of brightness. The long
pennants, like captured rainbows, tacked to the rough walls, the soft
toned prints, the gay cushions, all these lent an air of permanence,
of home, that she had never before seen in a man's cabin. She stood
and looked all around with that same half-insolent stare which had
greeted Kenset at the Holding that memorable day.
Then she went slowly forward and sat down in the big chair by the
table.
The man stood in her presence for a moment, thereby giving a subtle
effect of deference which was not wholly lost upon Tharon, though she
would have been at a loss to define it.
Then, he, too, sat down on the edge of the table desk in the corner,
and with folded arms waited while she finished her scrutiny of the
interior.
"I am proud of my home, Miss Last," he said presently. "What do you
think of it?"
"I think," said Tharon slowly, "that it looks like there's a woman
somewhere."
This time Kenset laughed in earnest, a ringing peal that startled El
Rey at the doorstep, and made him clink his bit-chains.
"There is," said the man, "assuredly."
Tharon turned her head and looked quickly over her shoulder.
"Where?" she asked in surprise.
"There in my big chair."
"Oh--I meant a woman livin' here, th' woman who owns the pretties."
And she waved a hand at the gay furnishings.
"No," said Kenset, "these are all my own pretties. I have books, as
you see, and my maps and several more pictures to put up, not to
mention some Mexican pottery that I brought from Ciudad Juarez, and my
chiefest treasure, a tapestry from France. That last I can't decide
upon. I have two splendid spaces--over there between the northern
windows, facing the door, and yonder at the end. Perhaps you will be
good enough to help me choose."
There was a boyish eagerness in his voice.
"Will you? After a while, I mean, when you have rested from your
ride."
"Rested?"
Tharon looked at him in wonder. That ride had been like wine to her, a
stimulant, a thing that sent the blood pounding in her veins.
Over the excitement had fallen a subtle shade, however, a hush, with
the sight of Bolt so close behind El Rey. If it had not been for that
grave thing she would have felt like a wound-up spring, intent with
energy, filled with action. She was always so when El Rey ran beneath
her. And this stranger spoke of rest! Tharon Last could ride all day
without a thought of rest.
"Sure," she said, "I'll help you if I can. But what's this thing?"
"A sort of picture," replied Kenset quickly, "a picture woven in
cloth. But first, if you'll be so kind, I want you to break bread with
me. You said we would not be friends. I'm not so sure of that. There
is nothing like a man's bread and salt for the refutation of logic."
He slipped off the desk with a lithe rippling of his body, but Tharon
was first on her feet.
"You mean stay to supper?" she asked decisively. "No, I can't do that.
I took back a meal from you. That stan's between."
"Why, you funny girl," said Kenset, "nothing stands between. And I
don't mean supper, exactly, either. Please sit down."
Tharon stood, considering. She turned the matter over in her mind.
She had taken this man's house by storm. It had, indeed, given her
refuge. If it had not been for the glade in the pines, she wondered
where she would be now--driven deep into Black Coulee, she made no
doubt, a prisoner to Courtrey.
"All right," she said abruptly, "I'll stay. But you must be quick. Th'
time is goin' fast."
Kenset went swiftly across the cabin to that part which served as
kitchen, and took from a curtain-covered set of shelves, a shiny
nickel object on spindly legs, which he brought and placed near Tharon
on the table.
He struck a match and presently a clean blue flame grew up beneath
it.
He lifted the lid and filled the small pot, thereby exposed, with
water from the bucket on a bench. Then he delved in one of the big
trunks against the farther wall and brought out a little tin of cakes,
such as one could buy in any city of the world.
All this was absorbing to the girl in the big chair, who watched with
grave eyes. And Kenset kept up a running stream of gay talk all the
time. He wanted to make her at ease, to cover the thought of the
strain between them, and how much he wanted to drive from his own mind
the knowledge that this sweet and wholesome creature was a potential
murderer, he did not know. From a can he measured chocolate. From a
pan somewhere outdoors he brought milk. Sugar he added carefully as a
woman, and presently he spread between them on the table a small
repast that was strange to this girl of the wilderness.
He watched her with appraising eyes and saw that there was in her no
consciousness of the unusual. She might have sat at meat in the big
room of the Holding for all the flutter there was in her.
He told her somewhat of himself, of his life in the East, but he was
careful not to ask about Lost Valley, to make mention of the
circumstances that had brought her to his door. And so an hour passed
as if it had been a bagatelle. The afternoon was waning when Tharon
rose swiftly and abruptly terminated this first visit inside his home
of any Lost Valley denizen.
"Bring out your picture," she said decisively, "I'll help you hang it,
an' then I must go home."
So Kenset dived once more into the mysterious recesses of the trunk
and this time brought out a thing of rare beauty and value, a large
tapestry, some four by six feet in size, a wonderful thing of soft and
deathless hues, of cunning distances, of Greek figures and leaning
trees, of sea-line so faint as to be almost lost in the misty skies.
"Oh!" said Tharon Last with an intake of her breath, "Oh, where do
they make such things?"
"Far on the other side of the world," said Kenset gently, pleased
with the wonder in her wide eyes, the evident and quick realization of
beauty.
She whirled from it and glanced quickly at the two spaces on the
rugged walls.
"There," she said, pointing to the broad expanse between the northern
windows, "hang it there."
"Done," said Kenset, and went promptly for a hammer.
When the huge thick mat was securely stretched in place, Tharon
helping to hold it while he pounded in the broad-topped tacks, Kenset
stepped back and wondered how he had ever for a moment considered
hanging it in any other spot. The tempered light from the door came in
upon it, bringing out each enchanted charm, each tender vista.
"Wonderful!" he said to himself, "I never knew how lovely it was amid
conventional surroundings!"
"Huh?" asked Tharon.
The man laughed in spite of himself and turned his eyes to hers, to
lose his quick amusement in the earnest blue depths that seemed to
question him at every angle.
"I mean that it looks better here in my cabin than it ever did on city
walls."
"Why?"
"Well--I don't know. Contrast, perhaps."
Tharon stood a moment thinking.
"Perhaps," she answered slowly, "yes, perhaps. I guess that's why you
seem so diff'rent to me. Jim Last used to say that was why th' Valley
was so soft-like an' lovely, contrasted by th' Rockface."
"Do I seem different to you?" asked Kenset quickly. "How?"
"Yes. I don't know how. You seem soft, like a woman--some women--an'
I'm afraid----"
She stopped suddenly, abruptly halted in her naive speech, as if she
had come face to face with something she had not meant to meet.
"Afraid?" probed the man gravely, "go on. You are afraid--of what?"
"No," said Tharon, "I won't say it"
"Please do. I want to know."
"Then," answered the girl straightly, after the honest and downright
fashion of all her dealings, "I'm afraid you are--are too soft. You
don't pack a gun. I'm afraid you wouldn't use it if you did."
There was a certain finality about the short speech, as if she had put
the last word of condemnation to his estate.
Kenset looked down at his hands, spread them out a bit.
"You're right," he said shortly, though his voice was still gentle. "I
don't. And I wouldn't. Not until the last extremity."
"An' what would that be?" she asked.
"I don't just know, Miss Last," he answered smiling and raising his
eyes once more to hers, "it would have to be--the _last_ extremity, I
know.
"The hands of all my forbears have been clean, so far as I know. I
have a deep horror of that imaginary stain which human blood seems to
leave on the hands of the killer. Blood guilt."
"You call it that? My daddy had his killin's, but they were all in
fair-an'-open. _I_ called him a _man_."
There was a ringing quality in her voice, a depth and resonance that
spoke of war and heroes. The fire that all the Holding knew was
suddenly in her eyes, flashing and flaming. Kenset caught it, and a
thrill shot through him.
"Granted," he said quickly. "But is there only _one_ type of man?"
"For me," said Tharon, "yes."
"I'm sorry," said he, and for the life of him he did not know why.
"So'm I," said Tharon honestly.
They looked at each other for a pregnant moment, while a silence fell
on the cabin and they could hear the singing water running down the
slopes.
Then the girl stooped and rearranged the cushion in the big chair,
laid a book more neatly on top of another at the table's edge.
"Th' time is up," she said, "I must be goin'."
She straightened her shoulders and looked at him again.
"I thank you for th' meal," she said, "an' some day I'll return it--in
some manner. I don't know yet just what you're here for, nor if you're
Courtrey's man or not--------"
"Good Lord!" ejaculated Kenset, but she went on.
"I won't shake hands with you, for whilst I ain't done no killin' yet,
I'm sworn--an' Jim Last's hands was red--they would be to such as
you--an' down to th' last drop o' blood, th' last beat o' my heart,
I'm Jim Last's girl--th' best gun man in Lost Valley, if I do say
so."
And she swung quickly to the door.
Kenset followed her. He longed for words, but found none.
There was a sudden tragic seeming in the very air, a change from the
pleasant commonplace to the tense and unexpected. It was always so in
these strange meetings with the people of Lost Valley, it seemed, as
if he was never to find his way among them, the sane and quiet course
that he must travel.
As they reached the step at the door sill El Rey stamped and whinnied
a shrill blast. In through the gateway between the pines there came a
rider on a running horse, Billy on Golden who ploughed to a stop
before them, his grey eyes troubled.
"Hello, Billy," said Tharon. "How's this?"
"Been lookin' for you," said the boy. "We saw Courtrey an' his
ruffians ridin' up east--watched 'em with th' glass, an' Anita said
you rode south. Thought you might have met 'em."
"I didn't meet 'em, so to speak," she said, smiling, "though if I'd
been on anythin' but El Rey I would. They tried to drive me into Black
Coulee."
"Hell!" said Billy softly.
Then the Mistress of Last's remembered her manners.
"Billy," she said, "I make you acquainted with Kenset of th'
foothills. I rode in here just in time to shake th' Stronghold
bunch."
The two men spoke, reached to shake each other's hands, and took a
long survey that was mutual. As the two pairs of eyes met, a wall
seemed to rear itself between them, a mist, a curtain, something
intangible, but there.
They looked across the woman's shoulder, and from that moment she was
to stand between, though what there could be in common between the man
in the U. S. service and the common rider from Last's was not
apparent. El Rey was eager for flight and by the time Tharon's foot
was in the stirrup he was up on his hind feet, fore feet beating the
air, silver mane like a flying cloud. The girl rose with him
gracefully, threw her leg across the saddle, waved a hand to Kenset in
the door, and in another moment they were gone away down the grassy
slope, out through the opening, had stretched away along the
oak-dotted plain, swung toward the north, and were out of sight.
The forest man turned away from the doorway, stood a moment looking
over the cabin where the late light was making golden patterns on the
green and brown rug, sighed and reached for his pipe.
Somehow all the spirit seem to have gone from the summer day. The long
twilight was setting in.
"She wouldn't shake hands," he muttered to himself, "and what she said
was true as death. She's _sworn_--and it is a solemn oath to her. God
help the man who killed her daddy!"
Then once more he sighed, unconsciously.
"And Lord God help her!" he finished very gravely, "she is so
sweet--so wild and spirited and sweet."
Tharon and Billy let the horses run. Golden was a racer himself,
though he could not hold a candle to the silver king, and the two
young creatures atop were free as the summer winds, as buoyant and
filled with joy of being. So they shot down along the levels, Tharon
holding El Rey up a bit, though it was a man-size job to do so, and
Billy's rein swinging loose on Golden's neck. They passed the last of
the scattered oaks, came out to the green stretches. The sun was
swinging like a copper ball above the Wall at the west. Down through
the canyons the light came in long red shafts that cut through the
cobalt shadows like sharp lances of fire and reached half across Lost
Valley. All the western part of the Valley lay in that blue-black
shadow. They could see Corvan set like a dull gem in the wide green
country, the scattered ranches, miles apart.
They swung down to the west a bit, for Tharon said she wanted to go by
the Gold Pool and see how it was holding out.
"Fine," said Billy, "she's deep as she ever was at this time of year,
an' cold as snow."
Where one tall cottonwood stood like a sentinel in the widespread
landscape they drew rein and dismounted. Here a huge boulder cropped
from the plain and under its protecting bulk there lay as lovely a
spring as one would care to see, deep and golden as its name implied,
above its swirling sands, for the waters were in constant turmoil as
they pressed up from below.
The girl lay flat at its edge and with her face to the crystal
surface, drank long and deeply.
As she looked up with a smile, Billy Brent felt the heart in him
contract with a sudden ache.
Her fresh face, its cheeks whipped pink under their tan by the winds,
its blue eyes sparkling, its wet red lips parted over the white teeth,
hurt him with a downright pain.
"Oh, Tharon," he said with an accent that was all-revealing, "Oh,
Tharon, dear!"
The girl scrambled to her feet and looked at him in surprise.
"Billy," she said sharply, "what's th' matter with you? Are you
sick?"
"Yes," said the boy with conviction, "I am. Let's go home."
"Sick, how?" she pressed, with the born tyranny of the loving woman,
"have you got that pain in your stomach again?"
Billy laughed in spite of himself, and the romantic ache was
shattered.
"For the love of Pete!" he complained, "don't you ever forget that?
You know I've never et an ounce of Anita's puddin's since. No, I
think," he finished judiciously as he mounted Golden, "that I've
caught somethin', Tharon--caught somethin' from that feller of th'
red-beet badge. Leastways I've felt it ever sence I left th'
clearin'."
And as they swung away from the spring toward the Holding, far ahead
under its cottonwoods, he let out the young horse for another
stretch.
"Bet Golden can beat El Rey up home," he said over his shoulder.
"Beat th' king?" cried Tharon aghast, "you're foolin', Billy, an' I
don't want to run nohow. I've run enough this day."
So the rider held up again and together they paced slowly up through
the gathering twilight where long blue shadows were reaching out to
touch them from the western Wall and the golden shafts were turning to
crimson, were lifting as the sun sank, were travelling up and up along
the eastern mountains toward the pale skies. Soon they rode in purple
dusk while the whole upper world was bathed in crimson and lavender
light and Lost Valley lay deep in the earth's heart, a sinister spot,
secret and dark.
"Sometimes, Billy," said Tharon softly, "I like to ride like this, in
th' big shadows--an' then I like to have some one with me that I know,
some one like you, some one who will understand when I don't talk, an'
who is always there beside me. It's a wonderful feelin'--but somehow,
it's soft, too--mebby too soft--like--like--like a woman who's just a
woman."
The boy swallowed once, miserably.
"Always, Tharon," he said huskily, "always--when you want me--or need
me--I'll be there, beside you. An' you don't need to even speak a word
to me. I'm like th' dogs--there whether you call or not."
"I know," said the girl, and reaching over she caught the rider's
hand, brown beneath its vanity of studded leather cuff, and gave it a
little tender pressure.
Billy set his teeth to keep from crushing her fingers, and together
they rode slowly up along the sounding slopes to the beautiful
security and comfort of Last's Holding.