SIGNAL FIRES IN THE VALLEY
Kenset, two days later, gave Sam Drake a check for five hundred
dollars and a letter, unpostmarked but sealed with tape and wax.
Drake, who owned some half-breed Ironwoods, rode the best one down the
Wall.
Kenset had cautioned him not to talk before he left--he feared Drake's
propensity for speech. But he was the only man in Lost Valley whom he
felt he could approach.
With the courier's departure he rode back to the Holding and told
Tharon and Conford what he had done.
"These men are the best to be had," he said, "and they will go
anywhere on earth for money."
But Tharon frowned and struck a fist into a soft palm.
"What you mean?" she cried, "by takin' my work out of my hands like
this? I won't have it! I won't wait!"
"What I meant when I caught your bridle that day in the glade,"
answered the man, "to stop you from bloodshed."
Then he went back to his cabin and his interrupted work and set
himself to wait in patience for the return of Drake.
* * * * *
But in Lost Valley a leaven was rising. It had begun insidiously to
work with the appearance of Kenset in Tharon's band at Courtrey's
doorstep. It burst up like a mushroom with a chance remark made by
Lola of the Golden Cloud--Lola, who had seen, since that night in
spring when Tharon Last stood in the door and promised to "get" her
father's killer, that Courtrey was slipping from her. A woman like
Lola is hard to deceive.
Much experience had taught her to feel the change of winds in the
matter of allegiance.
She knew that surely and swiftly this man had gone down the path of
unreasoning love, that he would give anything he possessed, do
anything possible, to win for himself this slim mistress of Last's
Holding.
Therefore she played the one card she held, hoping to rouse the bully,
and did just the thing she was trying to avert.
"Buck," she said, her black head on his shoulder, her dark eyes
watching covertly his careless face, "the Last girl is lost to every
Valley man. Sooner or later she'll leave the country, mark my word,
with this Forest Service fellow, for she's in love with him, though
she doesn't know it yet."
With a slow movement Courtrey loosed his arm about Lola and lifted her
from him. His eyes were narrowed as he looked into her face.
"For God's sake!" he said, "what makes you think that?"
"Knowledge," said Lola, "long knowledge of women and men."
"If I thought that," said Courtrey slowly, his eyes losing sight of
her as he seemed to look beyond her. "If--I--thought that--why, hell!
If that's th' truth--why, it--it's th' lever!"
And he rose abruptly, though he had just settled himself in Lola's
apartment for a pleasant chat, as was his habit whenever he rode in
from the Stronghold.
"Lola," he said presently, "I might's well tell you that I'm plannin'
to have this girl for mine,--_mine_, you understand, legally, by law.
I can't have her like I've had you. She'd blow my head off th' first
time I stopped holdin' her hands." He laughed at the picture he had
conjured, then went on.
"An' so I feel grateful to you, old girl, for that remark. It sets me
thinkin'." And he stooped and kissed her on the lips. The woman
returned the kiss, a wonderful caress, slow, soft, alluring, but the
man did not notice.
His face was flushed, his eyes studying.
Then he swung quickly out through the Golden, Cloud, and Lola slipped
limply down on a couch and covered her ashen cheeks with her hands.
"Oh, Buck!" she whispered brokenly, "Oh, Buck! Buck!"
* * * * *
Courtrey went straight home, still, cold, thinking hard. His henchmen
left him in solitude after the first word or two. They knew him well,
and that something was brewing.
At midnight that night he roused Wylackie Bob, Black Bart and the man
who was known as Arizona, and the four of them went out on the levels
for a secret talk.
The next day the master of the Stronghold rode away on Bolt. As he
left, Ellen, standing in the doorway like a pale ghost, lifted her
tragic eyes to his face with the look of a faithful dog.
"Where you goin', Buck?" she asked timidly.
"Off," said the man shortly.
"Ain't you goin'--goin' to kiss me?"
He laughed cruelly.
"Not after what I ben a-hearin', I ain't!"
She sprang forward, catching at his knee.
"What--what you ben a-hearin'? There ain't nothin' about me you could
a-heard, Buck, dear! Nothin' in this world! I ben true to you as your
shadow!"
Every soul within hearing knew the words for the utter and absolute
truth, yet Courtrey looked at Wylackie Bob, at Arizona, and laughed.
"Like hell, you have!" he said, struck the Ironwood and was gone
around the corner of the house with the sound of thunder.
Ellen wet her lips and looked around like a wounded animal.
Her brother Cleve, saddling up a little way apart, cast a long
studying glance at Wylackie and Arizona. He jerked the cinch so
savagely that the horse leaped and struck.
For four days there was absolute dearth at the Stronghold.
Courtrey did not return. Ellen timidly tried to find out from the
_vaqueros_ where he had gone, but they evaded her.
Then, on the morning of that day, Steptoe Service, grinning and
important, came to the Stronghold and served on Ellen a summons in
suit for divorce.
She met him at the door and invited him in, timidly and shyly, but he
stood on the stone and made known his business.
At first she did not understand, was like a child told something too
deep for its intellect to grasp, bewildered.
Then, when Service made it brutally plain, she slipped down along
the doorpost like a wilted lily and lay long and white on the
sand-scrubbed floor. Her women, loving her desperately, gathered her
up and shut the door in the sheriff's face.
They sent for Cleve, and not even the presence of Black Bart in the
near corral could keep the brother from running into the darkened room
where Ellen lay, too stunned to rally.
"Damn him!" he gritted, falling on his knees beside her, "this's
what's come of it! I ben lookin' for something of its like. Let him
go. We'll leave Lost Valley, Ellen. We'll go out an' start another
life, begin all over again. We're both too young to be floored by a
man like Courtrey. Let him go."
But the woman turned her waxen face to the wall and shook her head.
"There ain't no life in this world for me without Buck," she
whispered. "If he don't want me, I don't want myself."
"You dont' want to hang to him, do you, Sis?" begged the man, "don't
want to stay at th' Stronghold after this?"
"Rather stay here under Buck's feet like th' poorest of his dogs than
be well-off somewheres where I couldn't never see him again, never
look in his face."
"God!" groaned Cleve, "you love him like that!"
"Yes," said Ellen, wearily, "like that."
"Then by th' Eternal!" swore Cleve softly, "here you'll stay if it
takes all th' law in th' United States to keep you here. I'll file
your answer tomorrow--protest to th' last word!"
And he rode into Corvan, only to find that Courtrey and Courtrey's
influence had been there before him, that a cold sense of disaster
seemed to permeate the town and all those whom he met therein.
He found the "Court House crowd" tight-lipped and careful.
And Ben Garland set the day for trial at a ridiculously early date,
for all the world as if the thing had been cut and dried at some
secret conclave.
Courtrey was playing his game with a daring hand, true to his name and
habit.
Dusk was falling in Lost Valley. The long blue shadows had swept out
from the Rockface, covering first the homesteads under the Wall, then
the great grazing stretches, then Corvan, then the open levels again,
then the mouth of Black Coulee and lastly sweeping eastward to hush
the life at Last's Holding in that soft, sweet quiet which comes with
the day's work done.
Out at the corrals Billy and Conford, Jack and Bent and Curly, put the
finishing touches to the routine of precaution which the Holding never
relaxed, day or night.
Inside the dusky living room where the bright blankets glowed on the
walls and the _ollas_ hung in the deep window places, Tharon Last sat
at the little old melodeon and played her nameless tunes. She did not
look at the yellowed keys. Instead her blue eyes, deep and glowing,
wandered down along the southern slopes and she was lost in
unconscious dreams. Once again she saw the trim figure of the forest
man as she had seen him come stiffly into her range of vision that day
in Corvan. She recalled his quiet eyes, dark and speaking, the odd way
his hair went straight back from his forehead. She wondered why she
should think of him at all.
He was against her--was a force that played directly against all her
plans of life, her precepts. Moreover, she had told him she feared he
was soft--like a woman--some women--that there was in him a lack of
the straight man-courage which was the only standard in Lost Valley.
And yet--she waited on his word, somehow--held her hand from her sworn
duty for a while, waiting--for what?
Ah, she knew! Deep in the soul of her she knew, vaguely and dimly to
be sure, but she knew that it was for the time when the die should be
cast--that he might prove himself for what he was.
For some vague reason she knew she would not kill Courtrey until this
man stood by.
She wondered what Courtrey meant by this strange quiet following the
tragic moment at the Stronghold steps when the Vigilantes had
challenged him and ridden away.
And then, all suddenly, into her dreaming there came the sound of a
horse's hoofs on the sounding-board without--slow hoofs, uncertain.
For one swift second that sound, coming out of the dusk with its
uncertainty, sent a chill of memory down her nerves. So had come El
Rey that night in spring when he brought Jim Last home to die!
She rose swiftly and silently and stepped to the western door.
There, in the shadows and the softness of coming night, a horse loomed
along the green stretch, came plodding up to stop and stand before
her, a brown horse, with the stirrups of his saddle hung on the
pommel, his rein tied short up--Captain, the good, common friend of
Kenset--of the--foothills!
Tharon felt the blood pour back upon her heart and stay there for an
awful moment. She put up a hand and touched her throat, and to save
her life she did not know why this sudden sickening fear should come
upon her.
She had seen men killed, had known tragedy and loss and heartache, but
never before had she seen the crest of the distant Wall to dance upon
the pale skyline so. Then she whirled into the house and her young
voice pealed out a call--Billy, Conford, Bent--she drew them to her
running through the deep house--to point to the silent messenger and
question them with wide blue eyes where fear rose up like a living
thing.
Billy at her shoulder, looked not at Captain, but at her.
A sigh lifted his breast, but he stifled it at birth and turned with
the others back toward the corrals. Tharon, running toward the deep
room where the Virgin stood in Her everlasting beauty, unfastened her
soft white dress as she ran. Inside she flung herself on her knees
before the Holy Mother and poured out a trembling prayer.
"Not that! Oh, Mary, not that! Let it not be _that_!" she whispered
thickly. Then she was up, into her riding clothes--was out where the
boys were hurriedly saddling the Finger Marks. Presently she was on El
Rey and shooting like a silver shaft in the summer dusk down along the
green levels toward the east. They rode in silence, Conford, Bent,
Jack, Curly, Billy and herself, and a thousand thoughts were boiling
miserably in two hearts.
El Rey, Golden, Redbuck, Drumfire, Westwind and Sweetheart, they went
down along the sounding dark plain, a magnificent band. The whole
earth seemed to resound to the thunder of their going, and for once in
their lives her beauties could not run fast enough for the mistress of
Last's.
They went like the wind itself, and yet they were slow to Tharon.
Out of the open levels there swung up to meet them and to fade into
the night, the standing willows by the Silver Hollow. The sloping
stretches began to lift, dotted by the oaks and digger-pines for whose
sake Kenset had come to Lost Valley. They shot through them, up along
the sharply lifting skirts of the hills, in between the guarding pines
that formed the gateway to the little glade where the singing stream
went down and the cabin stood at the head. Tharon's throat was tight,
as if a hand pressed hard upon it. The high tops of the pines seemed
to cut the sky grotesquely. There was no light at the dim log house,
no sound in the silent glade. Off to the right they heard the low of
the little red cow which served the forest man with milk.
They pounded to a sliding stop in the cabin's yard and Conford called
sharply into the silent darkness.
"Kenset! Hello--Kenset!"
Tharon held her breath and listened. There was no sound except a night
bird calling from the highest pine-tip.
Carefully the men dismounted.
"You stay up, Tharon, dear," the foreman said quietly, "until we look
around."
But to save her life the girl could not. What was this trembling that
seized her limbs? Why did the stars, come out on the purple sky, shift
so strangely to her eyes? She slipped off El Rey and stood by his
shoulder waiting. Conford struck a flare and lit a candle, holding it
carefully before him, shielding it with his palm behind it to throw
the gleam away from his face, into the cabin. The pale light illumined
the whole interior, and it was empty. The keen eyes of the riders went
over every inch of space before they entered--along the walls, in the
bed, under the tables. Then they filed in and Tharon followed, gazing
around with eyes that ached behind their lids. There on the northern
wall between the windows, was the great spread of the beautiful
picture she had helped the forest man to hang. There were his books on
the table's edge. She looked twice--the last one on the pile at a
certain corner was just as she had placed it there, a trifle crooked
with the edge, but neatly in line with those beneath it. There was the
big chair in which she had waited while he made the little meal--there
was his desk in the ingle nook, his maps upon it. It was all so
familiar, so filled with his personality, that Tharon felt the very
power of his dark eyes, smiling, grave----
"Hello!" said Jack Masters suddenly. "Burt, what's this?"
Conford stepped quickly around the table and held his candle down.
Tharon pushed forward and looked over the leaning shoulders.
There on the brown and green grass rug a rich dark stain was
drying--blood, some three days old.
Then, indeed, did the universe sag and darken to the Mistress of
Last's.
She put out a hand to steady herself and found it grasped in the
strong one of Billy, who stood at her shoulder like her shadow.
"Steady!" he whispered. "Steady, Tharon."
She drew her trembling fingers across her eyes, wet her lips which
felt dry as ashes. The same ache that had come with Jim Last's final
smile was already in her heart, but intensified a thousand times. She
felt all suddenly, as if there was nothing in Lost Valley worth while,
nothing in all the world! That drying stain at her feet seemed to shut
out the sun, moon and stars with its sinister darkness. She felt a
nausea at the pit of her stomach, a need for air in her cramped
lungs.
Strange, she had never known that one could be so detached from all
familiar things, could seem so lost in a sea of stupid agony. Why was
it so? If this dark blot of blood had come from the veins of Billy
now, of Conford, or Jack or Curly, her own men, would she have lost
her grip like this? And then she became dully conscious that Billy had
put her in the big chair by the table and had joined the others in
their exhaustive search for any clew to the tragedy. She saw the moon
rising over the tops of the pine trees at the glade's edge, heard the
little song of the running stream.
That was the little stream that Kenset had looked for in his ideal
spot, this was the home he had made for himself, these were the things
of the other life he had known, these soft, dark pictures, the books
on the tables, the brass things shining in the light from the lamp....
She knew that she was cold in the summer night, that she was staring
miserably out of the open door, scarcely conscious of the scattered
voices of her men, searching, searching, hunting, in widening circles
outside.... Then they came back talking in low voices and she roused
herself desperately. Her limbs were stiff when she rose from the big
chair, her hands were icy.
"No use, Tharon," said Conford quietly, "we can't find a damned thing.
If Courtrey's bunch killed Kenset they made a clean get-away with all
evidence. That much has th' new law done in th' Valley--killed th'
insolence of th' gun man. Let's go home."
It was Billy, faithful and still, who helped her--for the first time
in her life!--to mount a horse. She went up on El Rey as if she
were old. Then they were riding down the smooth floor of the little
glade, leaving that darkened cabin at its head to stand in tragic
loneliness.
She saw the tops of the guarding pines at the gateway, rode out
between them. The moon was up in majesty, and by its light Jack
Masters suddenly leaned down to look at something, pulled up, swept
down from his saddle, cowboy fashion, hanging by a foot and a hand,
and picked up something which he examined keenly.
"Look," he said quickly, "th' beet-man's badge!"
He held out on his palm a small dark object, the copper-coloured
shield which had shone on Kenset's breast!
Its double-tongued fastener was twisted far awry, as if it had been
wrenched away by violence.
Conford turned and looked back to the cabin, as if he measured the
distance.
"There's been funny work here as sure's hell," he said profoundly.
Then they rode on, all silent, thinking. It was near dawn when they
rode up along the sounding-board and put in at Last's. Billy reached
up tender arms and took Tharon off El Rey, and for the first time she
gave herself wearily into them as if she were done.
As she opened the door into her own dusky room the pale Virgin,
touched by a silver shaft of the sinking moon, stood out in startling,
ethereal beauty, Her meek hands folded on Her breast. Tharon Last
stumbled forward and sank in a heap at Her feet, her arms about the
statue's knees.
"Hail--Mary--intercede for--him--" she faltered, and then the shining
Virgin, the dim mystery of the shadowy room, faded out to leave her
for the first time in her strong life, a bit of senseless clay.
When she again opened her eyes the little winds of day were fanning
her cheeks and old Anita was tugging at her shoulders, voluble with
fright.
To the riders of Last's the tragedy was nothing more than any other
that they had known in Lost Valley. They went about their work as
usual.
Only Billy was filled with a sickening anguish at the knowledge that
he was not able to offer one smallest saving straw to the girl in the
big house--for Billy knew.
All day Tharon sat like a rock in her own room, staring with unseeing
eyes at the blank whitewashed walls. She did not yet know what ailed
her, why this killing, more than that of poor Harkness, should make
her sick to her soul's foundations. Yet it was so. Even the thought of
her sworn duty was vague before her for a time. Then it seemed to come
forward out of the mass of fleeting memories--Kenset that day at
Baston's steps shapely, trim, halted--Kenset laughing over the little
meal beside the table where the books lay--Kenset grasping her
shoulder when she whirled to mount El Rey and challenge the Stronghold
single-handed--to come forward like a calming, steadying thing and
turn the pain to purpose.
There was no one now to hold her back, no vital hands to press hers
upon a beating heart, to make her untrue to her given word!
Now she could go out, reckless and grim in her utter disregard of the
outcome, and kill Courtrey where he stood. The time had come. There
should be another cross in the granite beneath the pointing pine.
As if the whirling universe settled back to its ordered place the
right proportion came back to her vision, the breath seemed to lighten
her holden lungs.
Once again the girl arose and steadied herself, smoothed her tawny
hair, looked at her hands to find them free from the shaking that had
weakened them.
She dressed herself and went out among her people, quiet and pale.
The twilight had fallen and all the western part of the Valley was
blue with shadow. Only on Kenset's foothills was the rosy light
glowing, a tragic, aching light, it seemed to her. She saw all the
little world of Lost Valley with new eyes, sombre eyes, in which there
was no sense of its beauty. She wondered anxiously how soon she could
meet Courtrey, and where. And then with the suddenness of an ordered
play, the question was answered for her, for out of the dusk and the
purple shadows a Pomo rider came on a running pony and halted out a
stone's throw, calling for the "Senorita," his hands held up in token
of friendliness.
Without a thought of treachery Tharon went out to him and took the
letter he handed her--swinging around for flight as the paper left his
hand, for the riders of Last's were known all up and down the land.
This dusky messenger took no chances he could avoid. He was well down
along the slope by the time the boys came clanking around the house.
And Tharon, standing in the twilight like a slim white ghost, was
staring over their heads, her lips ashen, the scrawled letter
trembling in her hands. For this is what she read, straining her young
eyes in the fading light.
"Tharon. You must know by now that I mean bisness. All this
Vigilant bisness ain't a-goin' to help things eny. If it hadn't of
ben that I love you, what you think I'd a-done to that bunch?
That's th' truth. I ben holdin' off thinkin' you'd come to your
senses an' see that Buck Courtrey ain't to be met with vilence.
Now I'm playin' my trump card--now, tonight.
"Lola says you love this dude from below. That don't cut no ice
with me. I ain't carin' for no love from you at present. All I
want is _you_. I can make you love me once I've got you safe at
th' Stronghold. I ain't never failed with no woman yet. An' I mean
to have you, fair means or foul.
"Rather have you fair. So here's my last word.
"This Kenset ain't dead--yet. I went and took him. I've got him
safe as hell in the Canon Country. Ain't no man in th' Valley can
find God's Cup but me. He's guarded an' there's a lookout on th'
peak above th' Cup that can see a signal fire at th' Stronghold.
One fire out by my big corral means 'Send him out by False Ridge
with ten days' grub.' Two fires means 'Put a true bullet in his
head an' leave him there.' Now, here's the word. I've got a case
fixed up to divorce Ellen, legal. If you'll marry me soon's I'm
free, I'll build one fire out by that corral.
"If you say yes, you build one fire out by th' cottonwoods to th'
left of the Holdin'. I'm watchin' an' will see it at once. You can
see for yourself I mean bisness, as if you'll watch too, you'll
see that one fire here.
COURTREY."
For a long moment the Mistress of Last's stood in profound quiet, as
if she could not move. She was held in a trance like those dreadful
night-dreams when one is locked in deadly inertia, helpless. The net
which had been weaving in Courtrey's fertile brain was finished,
flung, and closing in upon her before she knew of its existence. An
awe of his cleverness, his trickery, gripped her in a clutch of ice.
The whole fabric of her own desires and plans and purposes seemed to
crumple like the white ash in a dead fire, leaving her nothing. She
had been out-witted instead of outfought. One more evidence of the
man's baseness, his unscrupulous cunning.
He played his trump card and it was a winner, sweeping the table--for
she knew before she finished that difficult reading that she would do
anything in all the world to stop that "true bullet" in the heart that
had pounded beneath her open palms.... Knew she would break her given
word to Jim Last--knew she would forsake the Holding--that she would
crawl to Courtrey's feet and kiss his hand, if only he would spare
Kenset of the foothills, would send him out to that vague world of
below, never to return!
She swayed drunkenly on her feet for a time that seemed ages long.
Then life came back in her with a rush. She broke the nightmare dream
and gasped out a broken command to her faithful ones.
"Billy!" she said thickly, "Oh, Billy! If you love me, run! Run an'
build a fire--one fire!--only _one_ fire, Billy, dear--out by th'
cottonwoods to th' left--of th' Holdin'!"
Then she went and sat limply down on the step at the western door,
leaned her head against the deep adobe wall, and fell to weeping as if
the very heart in her would wash itself away in tears.
And Billy, numb with anguish but true to the love he bore her, went
swiftly out and set that beacon glowing. Its red light flaring against
the blue darkness of the falling night seemed like a bodeful omen of
sorrow and disaster, of death and failure and despair.
Tharon on the sill roused herself to watch it leap and glow, then
turned her deep eyes to where she knew the Stronghold lay.
Presently out upon the distant black curtain of the night there flared
that other fire, signal of life to Kenset somewhere in the Canon
Country--and then her lips drew into a thin hard line and she
straightened her young form stiffly up, put a hand hard upon her
breast.
"A little time, Courtrey!" she whispered to herself, "Jus' a little
time an' luck, an' I'll give you th' double-cross or die, damn your
soul to hell!"
Billy, coming softly in along the adobe wall, caught the whisper,
felt rather than heard its meaning, and turned back with the step of a
cat.
* * * * *
An hour later, when all the Holding was quiet for the night, drifting
to early rest after the day's hard work, the Mistress of Last's,
booted, dressed in riding clothes, her fair head covered by a
sombrero, her daddy's guns at her hips, crept softly to the gate of El
Rey's own corral. She went like a thief, crouching, watching, without
a sound, and saddled the big stallion in careful softness. She led him
gently out and around toward the cottonwoods, away from the house.
When she was well away she put foot to stirrup and went up as the king
leaped for his accustomed flight.
But Tharon pulled him down. She wanted no thunder on the sounding-board
tonight. But soft as she had been, as careful, there was one at the
Holding who followed her every act, who went for a horse, too, who
saddled Drumfire in silence and who crept down the sounding-board--Billy
the faithful. Far down along the plain toward the Black Coulee he let
the red roan out, so that the girl, keen of hearing as of sight, caught
the following beat of hoofs, stopped, listened, understood and reined El
Rey up to wait.
And soon out of the shadows cast by the eastern ramparts, where the
moon was rising, she saw the rider coming. A quick mist of tears
suffused her eyes, a sick feeling gripped her heart.
Here was another mixed in the sorry tangle! She had always known
vaguely that Billy was one with her, that his heart was the deep heart
of her friend.
He was the one she always wanted near her in times of stress, it was
with him she liked to ride in the Big Shadow when the sun went down
behind the Canon Country.
But now she did not want him. She had a keen desire to see him safely
out of this--this which was to be the end, one way or the other, of
the blood-feud between the Stronghold and Last's.
Now as he loped up and stopped abreast of her in silence, she reached
out a hand and caught his in a close clasp.
"I don't want you, Billy, dear," she said miserably, "not because I
don't love you, but because I ain't a-goin' to see you shot by
Courtrey's gang. This is one time, boy, when I want you to leave me
alone, to go back without me."
The rider shook his head against the stars.
"Couldn't do it, little girl," he said wistfully, "you know I couldn't
do it."
"Ain't I your mistress, Billy?" asked Tharon sternly. "Ain't I your
boss?"
"Sure are," said the boy with conviction.
"Ain't I always been a good boss to you?"
"Best in th' world. Good as Jim Last."
"Then," said Tharon sharply, "it's up to you to take my orders. I
order you now--go back."
The cowboy leaned down suddenly and kissed the hand he held.
"I'm at your shoulder, Tharon, dear," he said with simple dignity,
"like your shadow. At your foot like the dogs that never forsake th'
herds. I couldn't go back an' leave you--not though I died for it
tonight.
"We'll say no more about it. I don't know where you're goin', but
wherever it is, there I'm goin', too, an' on my way. You can tell me
or not, just as you please, but let's go."
For a long time Tharon Last sat in the starlight and watched the
crests of the distant mountains fringed with the silver of the moon
that was rising behind them, and her throat ached with tears. All
these things that hurt her, these unknown, tangled things that she
knew dimly meant Life, had come to her with the advent of Kenset in
Lost Valley. She wished passionately for a fleeting moment that he had
never come, that the old swinging, rushing life of the ranges had
never known his holding influence. Then she felt again the hammering
of his heart beneath her palms, and nothing mattered in all the world
beside.
It was a thing beyond her ken, something ordered by fate. She must go
on, blindly as running waters, regardless of all that drowned.
But she loosed her hand from Billy's, leaned to his shoulder, put her
arm about his neck and drew his face to hers. Softly, tenderly, she
kissed him upon the lips, and she did not know that that was the
cruelest thing she had ever done in all her kindly life, did not see
the deathly pallor that overspread his face.
"I'm goin' to th' Canon Country, Billy," she said simply, "to find th'
Cup o' God an' Kenset."
Then she straightened in her saddle and gave El Rey the rein.
* * * * *
It was two of the clock by the starry heavens when these two riders
entered the blind opening in the Rockface and disappeared. El Rey, the
mighty, tossed his great head and whistled, stamped his hoofs in the
dead sift of the silencing floor. He had never before lost sight of
the sky, never felt other breath in his nostrils than the keen plain's
wind.
Now he shook himself and halted, went on again, and again halted, to
be urged forward by Tharon's spurred heels in his flanks. Up through
the eerie pass they went without speech, for each heart was filled to
overflowing with thoughts and fears.
To Billy there was something fateful, bodeful in the dead darkness,
the stillness. It seemed to him as if he left forever behind him the
open life of the ranges, the gay and careless days of riding after
Tharon's cattle.
For five years he had lived at Last's, under master and mistress,
content, happy. The half-remembered world of below had never called
him. The light on the table under the swinging lamp with Tharon's face
therein, the murmur of the stream through her garden, the whisper of
the cottonwoods, these had been sufficient. He had, subconsciously,
thanked his Maker for these things, had served them with a whole
heart. They had been his all, his life. Now the cottonwoods seemed far
away, remote, the life of the deep ranch house a thing of long ago.
All these things had given way to something that sapped the sunlight
from the air, the very blueness from the vaulted skies, something that
had come with the quiet man of the pine-tree badge. So Billy sighed in
the darkness and sat easily on Drumfire, his slim left hand fidgeting
with the swinging rein.
And Tharon was lost, too, in a maze of thoughts. She sat straight
as a lance, tense, alive, keen, staring into the narrow bore of the high
ceiled cut, thinking feverishly. Was Kenset really alive? Had
Courtrey been square with her? Or was he even now lying stiff and
stark somewhere in the high cuts, his dark eyes dull with death, that
beating heart forever stilled? She caught her breath with a whistling
sigh, felt her head swim at the picture. If he was--_if_--_he_--_was_--!
She fingered the big guns at her hip and savagery took hold of her.
Courtrey's left wrist to match his right. Then some pretty work about
him to make him wait--then a shot through his stomach--he would spit
blood and reel, but he wouldn't die--the butcher!--for a little while,
and she would taunt him with Harkness--and Jim. Last shot in the
back--with Old Pete--and with--with Kenset--the one man--Oh, the one
man in all the world whose quiet smile was unforgettable, whose vital
hands were upon hers now, like ghost-hands, would always be upon hers
if she lived to be old like Anita or died at dawn today! And Kenset
had counseled her to peace! To keep the stain of blood from her own
hands! She laughed aloud, suddenly, a ghastly sound that made cold
chills go down her rider's spine, for it was the mad laughter of the
blood-lust! Billy knew that Jim Last in his best moments was never
so coldly a killer as his daughter was tonight.
So they traversed the roofed cut and came out into the starlight of
the first canyon. Up this they went in single file. They passed the
place where Albright had found the dark spray on the canyon wall, the
standing rock where the gun with the untrue firing pin had kicked away
its shell. A little farther on was the disturbed and trampled heap of
slide which had held Old Pete's body. In silence they rode on, the
horses' hoofs striking a million echoes from the reverberating
crosscuts.
The moon was shining above, but here there was only a sifted light, a
ghostly radiance of starlight and painted walls. Tharon, riding ahead,
went unerringly forward as if she traveled the open ways of the Valley
floor. She turned from the main canyon toward the left and passed the
mouth of Old Pete's snow-bed. Between this and that standing spire and
pinnacle she went, with a strong certainty that presently stirred
Billy to speech.
"Tharon, dear," he said gently, "hadn't we better leave a mark or two
along this-a-way? Ain't you got no landmarks?"
"Can if you want," the girl said briefly, "I don't need landmarks."
"Then how you know the way? There ain't no one knows th' Canon
Country--but Courtrey."
"I don't know it," she said simply but with profound conviction. "I'm
_feelin'_ it, Billy. I know I'm goin' straight to th' Cup o' God. I'm
blind as a bat, it seems, yet goin' straight."
She lifted a hand and crossed herself.
"Goin' straight--Mary willin'--an' I'll come back straight. It lies up
there an' to th' left again." She made a wide gesture that swept up
and out, embracing the towering walls, the half-seen peaks against the
stars.
Billy shut his lips and said no more.
Up there lay False Ridge, the sinister, dropping spine that came down
from the uplands outside where the real great world began, and lured
those who traveled down it to crumbling precipice and yawning pit, to
sliding slope and slant that, once ridden down, could never be scaled
again, according to the weird stories that were told of it.
But if Tharon went to the Canons, there lay his trail, too. If she
went down False Ridge to death in the pits and waterless cuts, he
asked no better lot than to follow--the faithful dog at her foot, the
shadow at her shoulder.
And so it was that dawn crept up the blue-velvet of the night sky and
sent its steel-blue light deep in the painted splits, and they rode
unerringly forward up the sounding passes.
When the light increased enough to show the way they came abruptly to
the spot where it was necessary to leave the horses. The floor of the
canyon up which they were traveling lifted sharply in one huge step,
breast-high to a man.
Tharon in the lead halted and looked for a moment all up and down the
wondrous maze of pale, tall openings that encompassed them all round.
She turned in her saddle and looked back the way they had come. There
was darker shadow, going downward, but here and there those pale
mouths gaped, long ribbons of space dropping from the heights above
down to their level.
Up any one a man might turn and lose himself completely, for they in
turn were cut and ribboned with other mouths, leaving spires and walls
and faces a thousand-fold on every hand.
Tharon, even in the tensity and preoccupation of the hour, drew in her
breath and the pupils of her blue eyes spread.
"Th' Canon Country!" she said softly, "I always knew it would be like
this--too great to tell about! I knew it would hold somethin' for
me--always knew it--either life an' its best--or death."
There was a simple grandeur about the earnest words, and Billy, his
face grey in the steely light, felt the heart in his breast thrill
with their portent.
No matter what the Canons held for her--either that glorious
fulfillment of life, or the simple austerity of death--he would have a
part in it, would have served her to the last, true to the love he
bore her, true to himself.
And nothing--nothing under God's heaven, save death itself--could ever
wipe out the memory of that kiss, given from the depths of her loving
heart, the sign-manuel of her undying affection and friendship, the
one and only touch of her inviolate red lips that he had ever known
the Mistress of Last's to give to any man, save Jim Last himself.
He wiped a hand across his forehead, damp with more than the night
cold, and dismounted.
"We'll leave th' horses here," he said. "I've an extra rope to string
across an' make a small corral."
He did not add that he would fasten this slim barrier lightly, so that
a horse that really wanted to break out--in the frantic madness of
thirst, say,--might do so.
Then he set about his task--but Tharon stood with strained eyes
looking up--and up--and ever up to the dimly appearing, looming spine
of False Ridge.
Over there, she knew in her heart, lay the hidden Cup o' God, with its
secret, the secret that meant all the world to her.