THE UNTRUE FIRING PIN
Tharon turned back and looked long at El Rey. She wondered if she
would ever see the great silver-blue stallion again, ever feel the
wind singing by her cheeks, ever hear the thunder of his running on
the hollow ranges. She saw the stain of Jim Last's blood on the big
studded saddle and a pain like death stabbed her.
"I'll get him," she had promised on that tragic day, "so help me God!"
and had made the sign of the Cross.
What did she now?
Cast away all certainty of that fulfilment because a man--a man almost
a stranger--lay somewhere in the Canon Country, crawled somewhere
along False Ridge, perhaps, wounded and sick with fever.
"Oh, hurry!" she whispered as Billy made secure his last light knot in
the rope gateway across the cut and came to join her.
She scrambled up the bench in the canyon floor, gained her feet and
went forward at a rush.
"Steady, Tharon," warned the rider, "you ain't used to climbin'. Save
your wind."
It was true advice. Long before the sun was high overhead and day was
broad in the painted cracks she had begun to heed it. As she swung up
the ever lifting floors, threaded this way and that between the thin
intercepting walls that towered hundreds of feet straight up, she cast
her wide eyes up in wonder. Always she had watched the Canon Country
from her western door, always it had held her with a binding lure.
There was that about its mystery, its austere majesty, that had
thrilled her heart from babyhood. She had pictured it a thousand times
and always it had looked just so--pink and grey and saffron, pale and
misty with light when the sun was high, blue and wonderful and black
as the luminary lowered, leaving the quick shadows.
Hour after hour they climbed, mostly in silence, speaking now and then
some necessary word of caution, of assent. This way and that Tharon
turned, but always moving upward in the same direction. From time to
time Billy dropped a shred of the red kerchief about his neck, touched
the soft walls with the handle of the knife he carried. This left a
mark plain as a trail to his trained eyes.
At noon they halted for a little rest. From Tharon's saddle Billy had
taken the flask of water, the tightly rolled bundle of bread and meat
in its meal-sack. They ate sparingly of this, drank more sparingly of
the water. Billy wondered miserably how soon this last might become
more precious than fine gold to him, as he thought of the waterless
pockets of the blind and sliding country.
Long before she had rested sufficiently Tharon was up and ready to go.
Ever her eager eyes were on the heights above. Ever they turned to the
left of the steady line she set herself through and above the winding
passes. From time to time Billy looked back. There was not a sign by
which one might tell which way he had come if the last mark he made
was around the first corner. Hundreds and thousands of spires and
faces towered about them. It was a mystic maze of dead stone, cut and
weathered by the elements.
"No wonder!" he told himself, "that the Indians call it the Enchanted
Land!"
"We'll reach False Ridge tomorrow, Billy," Tharon told him confidently,
"an' over it lies God's Cup. There's water there--an' Kenset."
"What makes you think so?"
"I don't know. Just feel. He's there--alive or--" a half sob clutched
at her voice--"or dead. But he's there."
"There'll be some one with him if he's alive, most likely."
"Sure," said Tharon briefly.
All the afternoon they traveled, sometimes touching with outstretched
hands the faces on either side of them, again walking upward through
majestic halls, solemn and beautiful. Everything about them was
beautiful, the height, the sheer, straight walls, the myriad little
blue shadows of tiny projections on their faces. Night came so early
in the pits that long before they wished they were compelled to camp.
In a blind pocket, walled like a room and round as an apple, they
stopped, and Billy spread down the blanket he had taken from
Drumfire's back. This was their only preparation. They had nothing to
do, no fire to build, no water to bring.
Tharon, scarcely conscious of the many miles she had traveled since
the previous night, sat down upon the blanket, gathered her knees in
her arms and stared at the vague blue phantoms of cliffs through the
tall straight mouth that led into this sheltered pocket.
Outside the winds were drawing up the canyons. All day they had walked
in this wind. It drew constantly up and down the cuts, this way and
that, like contrary currents that met and fought each other, swung in
together, went a little way in peace, to again split and surge away
through other channels. The echoes were alive with every sound, both
of their own making and that of the wind's. A constant sighing droned
through the depths, a mournful, whispering sound that sent the shivers
down Tharon's spine, made her think sadly of all the tragedies she had
ever known.
Billy, lying full length beside her, his hands beneath his head,
looked up to the narrow blue spot of sky so far away, and thought his
own thoughts, and they were not wholly sad.
They fell to talking, softly, in low tones, as if in all the
mysterious solitude there might be one to hear, and it was mostly
speech of long ago--when Billy had first come into Lost Valley.
After a long and quiet hour the man insisted that she should
sleep--that after the hard day and in view of the coming hard morrow,
she needed rest.
"But I'm not tired, Billy," Tharon protested, "no more'n as if I'd
been ridin' all day after th' cattle."
But Billy shook his head and hollowed a little place in the soft slide
stuff at the Wall's foot. In this he spread the blanket, folding it
half back.
"Lie down," he commanded, "an' you'll be asleep so quick you won't
know when it happens."
Tharon slipped off her daddy's belt and stretched her slim young form
in the hollow, which fitted it like a cradle. Not for nothing had
Billy slept out many a night with nothing save the earth and stars for
bed and blanket. The hollow was craftily deepened at hip and shoulder,
making a restful couch. As she settled herself therein he lapped the
loose half of the blanket over her and tucked it in. Then he took his
hat, folded it sharply and placed it under the tawny head.
In its place he would fain have laid his heart.
His fingers, settling the improvised pillow, tangled themselves
wistfully in the sun-bright hair, and the boy groaned aloud.
"What's the matter, Billy, dear?" asked Tharon anxiously, but Billy
laughed lightly, a thin sound in the mighty caverns.
"Nothing in God's world, Tharon," he lied. "Now go to sleep."
And he walked away to the tall mouth and sat down with his back
against one of the walls. From his pocket he took papers and tobacco
and proceeded to roll himself a cigarette.... Dawn showed the narrow
doorway strewn with their butts, as leaves strew mountain trails in
autumn.
* * * * *
Things were ready to happen in Lost Valley--several things.
At the Golden Cloud, Lola looked across the level stretches toward the
Stronghold with tragic dark eyes, and smiled at a dozen men whom she
scarcely saw. Settlers from all up and down the Wall drifted into
Corvan and out again, intent, silent, watchful. _Vaqueros_ and riders
from the Stronghold also came and went, as intent, as silent. They
passed each other with hostile eyes and trigger fingers were unusually
limber. The air was pregnant with change.
Buck Courtrey was conspicuous by his absence.
He was not seen in the town, neither was he at the Stronghold.
There were soft whispers afloat that he was with the Pomos up under
the Rockface at the north.
And at the Stronghold, poor Ellen, whiter than ever, more like a
broken lily drooping on its stem, trembled and waited for a day that
was set soon--too terribly soon!--the day, farcically appointed, for
the suit for divorce against her.
Word of this was abroad through all the Valley. Underground
speculation was rife as to which of the two women whom Courtrey
favoured, Lola or Tharon, was responsible. Some said one, some the
other. But Lola knew.
Then came the day itself--a golden summer day as sweet and bright as
that one years ago when Courtrey had married Ellen--at this same pine
building where the laughable legal farces were enacted now.
Pale as a new moon Ellen rode in across the rolling stretches on one
of the Ironwoods, with Cleve beside her. She was spiritless, silent.
Cleve was silent, too, though for a far different reason. There was a
frown between his brows, a glitter in his narrowed eyes. He was
thinking of the only man in Corvan whom he had been able to persuade
to present Ellen's protest--Dick Burtree, one-time lawyer and man of
parts in the outside, now a puffed and threadbare vagabond, whose
paramount idea was whiskey and more whiskey. But Burtree could talk.
Over his mottled and shapeless lips could, on occasion, pour a stream
of pure oratory silver as the Vestal's Veil.
When he was drunk he feared neither man nor devil, and he could speak
best so. Therefore Cleve had given him enough money in advance to put
him in trim.
"What you think Buck'll say about me, Cleve?" Ellen asked anxiously.
"What's he mean to accuse me of?"
"Any dirty thing he can trump up, Sis," said Cleve gravely, "he's
a-goin' to make it a nasty mess--an' I wish to God you'd jest ride on
down th' Wall with me an' never even look back."
He leaned from his saddle and took the blue-veined hand in his. There
was an unspeakable tenderness in his eyes as he regarded his sister.
"What you say, Ellen? There's life below, an' work an' other men.
You'll marry again, sometime----"
But Ellen shook her head with its maize-gold crown.
"Nary other man, Cleve," she said gently. "I'm all Buck's woman."
So they rode on toward the town, and Cleve knew that his last faint
hope was dead.
In the town itself there was a stir. Courtrey was there, and Wylackie
Bob, and Black Bart and Arizona, a bunch of dark, evil men in all
surety.
The Ironwoods were in evidence everywhere, but strange to say, there
were no Finger Marks. Not a man from the Holding was in town.
When Cleve and Ellen, alone together, rode in, it lacked yet a half
hour of the time set for trial. There was no place to go but Baston's,
so they dismounted at the hitch-rack. Ellen, swaying on her feet,
looked all around with her big pale eyes, and when she saw Courtrey
some distance away she put a hand to her heart as simply as a hurt
child. She was a pitiful creature in her long white dress, for she
had ridden in on an old sidesaddle, and she shook out the crumpled
folds in a wistful attempt to look proper. On her head was the
inevitable sunbonnet of slats and calico.
As she went up the steps of the store with Cleve, Lola of the Golden
Cloud, blazing like a comet in her red-and-black came face to face
with her purposely. What was in Lola's head none would ever know, but
she wanted to see Courtrey's wife.
As they met they stopped dead still, these two women who loved one
man, and the look that passed between them was electric, deep,
revealing. They stood so long staring into each other's eyes that
Cleve, frowning, plucked Ellen by the sleeve and made to push
forward.
But as suddenly as a flash of light Lola reached out her two hands and
caught Ellen's in a tight clasp that only women know, the swift,
clinging clasp of the secret fellowship of those who suffer.
For one tense moment she held them, while Ellen swayed forward for all
the world as if she would sink in upon the deep full breast of this
wanton whom she had hated! Then the spell broke, they fell apart with
a rush, Lola swung out and went down the steps, while Ellen obediently
followed Cleve into Baston's store, where she sat on a nail keg and
waited in a dull lethargy. Outside Courtrey, who had witnessed the
thing from across the street, slapped his thigh and laughed
uproariously.
It was a funny sight to him. But Lola's beautiful black eyes blazed
across at him with a light that none had ever seen before in their
inscrutable depths.
Then the hour struck, and all Corvan, it seemed to Cleve, strung out
toward the Court House. This was to be in open court--a spectacle.
From somewhere in the adobe outskirts of the town came Ellen's serving
women, most of them, whom Cleve had sent in early in the day. They
fell in with her and so, with only the brother who had never failed
her and these dusky women of the silent tongues to back her, Ellen
Courtrey went to her crucifixion as truly as though she had been one
of the two thieves on Golgotha.
At the sight of Courtrey across the big bare room she went whiter than
she was, if such a thing were possible, and slid weakly into the chair
placed for her.
Then the thing proceeded--swiftly, lightly, with smiles on the faces
of the crowd.
Old Ben Garland on the judge's bench, was furtive, scared, nervous,
fiddling with his papers and clearing his throat from time to time.
The county clerk at his table made a great deal out of the ceremony
of swearing in the witnesses--Wylackie Bob, Black Bart, Arizona and
one young Wylackie Indian woman who worked at the Stronghold. Cleve
put up only the serving women whom he had sent in, some seven of them,
every one of whom loved their mistress with the faithful fidelity of a
dog. These women knew Ellen Courtrey as not even the master of the
Stronghold himself knew her. They knew her in her idle hours, at her
small tasks, at her bedside, in the loving solicitude she displayed
for all of them--and they knew her on her knees in prayer, for Ellen
had a strange and simple religion, half Catholic and half Pomo
paganism.
In the straight-backed chair they gave her Ellen sat like a statue,
sweet and still, a thing so obviously good that it seemed even
Courtrey himself must weaken to behold her. But not Courtrey. He was
on fire with the vision of Tharon Last on the Cup Rim's floor, shaking
her fist toward him in challenge--at Baston's steps calling him a
murderer and worse--at her western door, striking him from her with
the strength of a man. He saw the signal fire flaring across the
darkened Valley--and nothing on earth or in Heaven could have softened
him to the woman who bound him away from this fighting girl, this gun
woman whom he was breaking to him slowly but surely. He visioned her
in Ellen's room at the Stronghold--and the breath came fast in his
throat.
And Ellen?
Ah, Ellen was thinking of the long past day when this man had found
her in the barren rocklands and taken her with the high hand of a
lover. She, too, drifted away from the chilling courtroom with its
judge and its petty officials.... And then all suddenly she knew that
men were talking--and about her. She heard the drone of question and
answer--the rambling statements of the stranger, Arizona, accusing her
of strange things--of asking him to take her on rides in Courtrey's
absence--of swinging with him nights in the hammock by the watering
trough!
She sat and listened with parted lips and large innocent eyes fixed on
the man in wonder. Cleve Whitmore clenched his hands until the nails
cut deep, but he held his tongue and controlled his face. Only the
blazing blue eyes spoke. She knew that Black Bart tried to tell
something, that he made some mistake or other and had to begin all
over again. There was a long and tedious time in here when she looked
away out the window to where the prairie grass was blowing in the
little winds and the shadows of clouds drifted across the green
expanse.... She was numb and far away with misery. She did not care
for anything in all this world. It seemed as if she was detached,
aloof, dead already in body as she was in soul.... And then she heard
the drawling voice of Wylackie Bob--and he was saying something
unspeakable--about her! She listened like one in a trance--then she
struggled up from her chair with tragic long arms extended, and the
cry that rang from her lips was piteous.
"Buck!" it pealed across the stillness of the crowded room, "Buck!--it
ain't so! Never in this world, Buck! I ben true to you as your shadow!
Before God, it ain't true!"
There was a stir throughout the crowd, a breath that was audible.
There were many of the Vigilantes there--a goodly number, all
wondering where Tharon Last was, where Kenset was, where were
the riders from Last's. They had expected, what they did not
know--something, at any rate, for this seemed somehow a test, a
turning point. But there was nothing. They stirred and waited,
like a great force heaving in its bed, blind, sluggish, but
wakening.
And Ellen, chilled by Courtrey's sneering face, the cold disapproval
of Ben Garland's striking mallet, sank back in her chair and covered
her face with her shaking hands.... She heard some more awful
things--then the voice of Dick Burtree beginning soft, low, silver
like running waters. She heard it tell of that far away day of her
marriage--of the years that followed--of Courtrey's love for her--of
her own gentleness, her beauty, "like the tender sunlight of spring on
the snow and the golden sands"--of her service, her loyalty, her love
that had "never faltered nor intruded" that "patient obedience to her
master had but strengthened and made perfect." Of the pitiful thing
that her life had been this man made a wondrous thing, all sweet with
twilights and haloed with service.
He talked until the courtroom was still as death and the Indian women
behind her were rocking in unison of grief. Then she heard questions
again and the gutteral soft voices of her women answering--with love
and devotion in every halting word. Once again the crowd in the room
stirred--and Courtrey's narrow eyes went over it in that cold,
promising glance.
For once in his life Courtrey, the bully, felt a premonitory chill
down his spine--because for the first time that promising glance of
his failed of its effect! Only here and there along the rows of faces
did one cower. There were faces, many faces, that looked back at him
with steady eyes and tight lips.... Verily it was time he conquered
the riding, shooting, beautiful she-devil who had made this thing
possible! The sooner he got Tharon Last away from this bunch of spawn
the better. Then he would sweep in with all his old swift methods,
only sharper ones this time, and "clean" them all. When he got through
it would be a different man's Valley, make no mistake about that!
Here Ellen looked straight into his eyes and both were conscious of
the shock. Ellen wilted and Courtrey frowned and struck a fist against
the railing near him.... He looked up and met the hesitating eyes of
Ben Garland on the bench and his own hardened down to pin points.
The farce was finished save for the Judge's decision--Dick Burtree was
slumped in his chair, dead drunk and asleep. Wylackie Bob was lighting
a cigarette in his brown fingers, a smile on his evil mouth, his slow,
black eyes covering the slim white form of Ellen in a speculative way,
as if he dreamed of making true his blasphemous lies. Ellen was sweet
as a flower in her open-lipped beauty, her panting despair. Wylackie
did not notice the slim man beside her whose lips were so tight that
they were a mere line across his face. No one at the Stronghold
noticed Cleve much.
Then Ben Garland was speaking, and Ellen gathered her dim wits enough
to make out that he was saying strange things--awful things--that had
to do with Courtrey's freedom.
Then she knew--swaying and groping with her blue-veined hands--that
the thing was done--that she was no longer a wife. That she would
never again sleep in the bend of Courtrey's arm as she had slept in
those golden days of long ago--that she was an outcast, blackened
beyond all hope by the damning and unchoice words of Wylackie Bob....
Then the world faded out for Ellen in merciful blackness.
The petty officials rose with laughter and clanking of boots on the
board floors--the crowd filed out in a striking silence. Never before
had a crowd in Lost Valley gone out from a courtroom in that strange
and bodeful silence.
The sight of Ellen lying white and limp across Cleve Whitmore's
shoulder like a sack of grain, as he passed out with the moving mass,
had an odd effect. It was partly the white dress that did it--and the
time was ripe.
Courtrey and his gang were toward the fore--first out. They spread off
to one side with jest and quip, with flash of bottle and slap on
shoulder. The populace thinned a bit from the steps.... And then
suddenly as a pistol shot Cleve Whitmore's voice rang out like a
clarion.
"Wylackie!" it pealed across the subdued noises, "You ---- ---- ----
hell hound. _Turn round!_"
There was death in it.
The gun man whirled, drawing like lightning. In the Court House door,
Cleve Whitmore with his sister's limp form on his shoulder, beat him
to it.
He had drawn as he called. Before the words were off his lips he
pulled the trigger and shot Wylackie through the heart.
As his henchman fell Courtrey's good hand flashed to his hip, but
Dixon of the Vigilantes, shot out an arm and knocked him forward from
behind.
For the second time Courtrey had missed a life because a brave heart
dared him. Old Pete had paid the price for that trick. Dixon had no
thought of it.
And in one moment the chance was past, for a sound began to roar from
that silent crowd which had poured from the courtroom--the deep,
bloodcurdling sound of the mob forming, inarticulate, uncertain.
For the first time in his life Courtrey felt real fear grip him.
He had killed and stolen and wronged among these people and gotten
away with it. He had never feared them. They had been silent. Now with
the first deep rumble from the concrete throat of Lost Valley he got
his first instinctive thrill of disaster.
He stood for a moment in utter silence. Then he flung up his hands,
snapped out an order, whirled on his heel and went swiftly to the near
rack where stood Bolt and the rest of the Ironwoods. Like a set of
puppets on strings his men drew after him--and they left Wylackie Bob
where he fell.
In a matter of seconds the whole Stronghold gang was mounted and
clattering down the street--out of the town toward the open range.
* * * * *
And the killer on the Court House steps?
He stood where he was and looked with blazing eyes over the motley
crowd beneath him. Steptoe Service made a step toward him, looked
round, wet his lips and thought better of it.
* * * * *
And then, in another second, the crowd was a mob and the mob was the
Vigilantes. Some one took Ellen from Cleve's shoulder with careful
hands and carried her away. Then some one reached down and picked him
up bodily. Another joined, and they set him on their shoulders,
lifting him high. The inarticulate mob cry swelled and deepened and
rose to a different sound--a shout that gathered volume and roared out
across the spaces where Courtrey rode with a menace, a portent.
With one accord the mob started on a journey around Corvan.
White as Ellen, Cleve Whitmore rode that triumphant journey, his eyes
still blazing, his lips tight. The town went wild. Public feeling came
out on every hand. Daring took the weak, hope took the oppressed, and
they called Courtrey's reign right there. For three uproarious hours
the bar-tenders could not wipe off their bars.
A new regime was ushered in--and she who had been its sponsor was not
there to see it.
* * * * *
When the hour of Change was striking for Corvan and all Lost Valley,
Tharon Last, who had set it to strike, was scaling False Ridge in the
Canon Country. Grim, ash-pale with effort, her blue eyes shining, she
climbed the Secret Way that few had ever found.
How she had come to it through the tortuous cuts and passes was a
marvel of homing instinct--the heart that homed to its object. It had
seemed to her all along this strange, tense journey, that she had had
no will of her own, that she had held her breath and shut her eyes, as
it were, and gone forward in obedience to some strange thing within
that said, "turn here," "go thus." Billy following behind, watched her
with tight lips and a secret wonder. As she had told him she would
"go straight, Mary willing," so she had gone straight--and it seemed,
truly, as if it were right that she should, no matter how his heart
ached to see this thing.
Verily there was something supernatural about it all, something
uncanny.
If it had been he, Billy, whom Tharon loved, and had he lain, wounded
in the Cup o' God, would the girl have been given this blind instinct
for direction? Would she have gone as unerringly to the Secret Way?
Nay--there must be something in the old saying that, for every heart
in the world there was its true mate.
Tharon had found hers in Kenset.
But where would he ever find his? The boy shook his fair head
hopelessly at the sliding floors. For all perfection there must be
sacrifice. He was the sacrifice for Tharon's perfection--a willing
one, so help him!
That they had found the Secret Way across False Ridge was perfectly
plain, for here in the living rock before them were marks, the first
marks they had found in the Canons. Thin, small crosses, cut in the
stone of the walls, began to lead upward from the last liftings cut
straight up the Rockface of False Ridge itself. It seemed, to look at
the dim traces, that no living thing without wings could scale that
steep and forbidding cliff, but when they tried to climb, they found
that each step had been set with artful cunning. The set of steps
followed the form of a "switchback," working from right to left, and
always rising a little. False Ridge itself, a towering, mighty spine,
came down in a swiftly dropping ridge from somewhere in the high upper
country at the west of all the canyons. It was known to lead
deceptively down among the cuts and passes, as if it went straight
down to the lower levels, and to end abruptly in a precipice that none
could descend or climb. On all its rugged sides there were treacherous
slopes which looked hard enough to support a man, but which, once
stepped on, gave sickeningly away to slide and slither for a hundred
feet straight down to some abrupt edge, where they fell in dusty
cataracts to blind basins and walled cups below.
In these blind cups were many skeletons of deer and other animals that
had ventured down from the upper world, never to return. Somewhere up
here must be the bones of Canon Jim.
But the Secret Way was safe. Under every carefully worked out step
there was solid stone, for every handhold there was a firm stake set.
These stakes were old for the most part, but here and there had been
set in a new one--Courtrey's work, they made no doubt, for Courtrey
was said to know the Canons. It took Tharon and Billy two hours to
make the climb, stopping from time to time to rest. At such times the
boy stood close and took her hand. It was grim work looking down the
sheer face, and one might well be excused for holding a hand for
steadiness. And it would soon be the time for no more touches of this
girl's fair self for Billy.
And so, climbing steadily and in comparative silence, these two, whose
hearts were strong, came at last to the top of False Ridge--a thin
knife-blade of stone--and looked abruptly and suddenly down on the
other side.
With a little gasp Tharon put a hand to her throat, for there, an
unbelievably short distance down, lay the Cup o' God, without a doubt.
A small, round glade of living green, watered by a whispering stream
that lost itself the Lord knew where, it lay like a tiny gem in the
pink stone setting. Trees stood in utter quiet about its edges, for
there was here no slightest breath of air. Lush grass carpeted its
level floor. And there, almost directly under the marked way leading
down, lay a tiny camp--the ashes of a dead fire, a gun against a tree,
and--here Tharon leaned far out and looked as if her very spirit would
penetrate the distance--a blanket spread on the level earth, on which
there lay the body of a man!
It was a trim body, they could see from where they stood, clad in dark
garments of olive drab that hugged the lean limbs close.
"Kenset!" whispered Tharon with paling lips. "Kenset of th'
foothills,--an'--he--looks," she wet those ashy lips, "he--looks like
he is dead."
Without another word she set her feet in the precarious way and went
down so fast that Billy's heart rose in his throat and choked him, and
for the first time since he could remember, he called fervently upon
his Maker with honest reverence. He thought at every slip and scramble
that she must fall and go hurtling down the Rockface.
But that uncanny instinct which had brought her this far was at her
command still. She went down faster than it seemed possible for
anything to go, and before the rider was able to catch up she had
leaped to the grassy floor, and was running forward toward that still
form on the blanket.
"Kenset!" she cried like a bugle, "Kenset! Kenset! Oh,--David!"
And then it was that the quiet form stirred, rolled over on its side,
lifted itself on an elbow--and held out two arms that wavered
grotesquely, but were eloquent of love's power and its need.
And the Mistress of Last's flung herself on her knees, gathered up
this strange man as if he had been a child, pressed him hard against
her breast, and kissed him as we kiss our dead. She pushed his face
from her and looked into it as if she would see his very soul, the
tears running on her white cheeks, her lips working soundlessly.
This was love! This agony--this ecstasy--this sublime forgetting of
all the world beside--this reward after struggle.
Billy stood for a second at the foot of the Wall, and the nails cut in
his palms. Then he whirled and went fast as he could walk toward the
first trees that presented themselves--and he could not see where he
was going for the bleak grey mist that swam in his eyes.
This was love! This dreary colour of the golden sunlight of noon in
the high country--this dumb ache that locked his throat--this high
courage that brought him serving love's object to the bitter-sweet
end. How long he stood there he did not know. His heart was dead, like
the weathered stone country about him. He knew that he heard Tharon's
voice after a while, that golden voice which had been the bells of
Last's, in rapid question and answer--and Kenset's voice, too, weak
and slow, but filled with joy unspeakable. It was lilting and soft, a
lover's voice, a victor's voice, and presently he caught a few of the
broken words that passed between them--"Clean! Clean! Oh, Tharon,
darling--there is no blood on these dear hands! Tell me you did not
kill Courtrey!"
He heard Tharon answer in the negative.
And then all the world fell about him, it seemed, for a gun cracked
from the trees beyond him and a wasp stung his cheek.
In one instant the sunlight became brilliant again, the joy came back
in the day. Here was something more to do for Tharon, a new task at
hand when he had thought his tasks were all but done.
He whirled, looked, drew his six-gun and began firing at the man who
stood in plain sight just where he had stepped into the Cup from the
mouth of a little blind cut where the stream went out in noise and
lost itself.
This was a big man, sinister and cold and dark, a half-breed Pomo of
Courtrey's gang, a still-hunter who did a lot of the dirty work which
the others refused. Billy had seen him before, knew his record.
Now they two stood face to face and fired at each other swiftly,
coolly. He saw the half-breed stagger once, knew that he had touched
him somewhere. And then a sound cut into the snapping of the shots, a
sound that was like nothing he had ever heard in all his life before,
a sound as savage as the roar of a she-bear whose cub is killed before
her eyes. As he flung away his empty gun and snatched the other, he
moved enough to bring into his range of vision Tharon Last, standing
over Kenset, her mouth open in that savage cry.
Then before he could draw and fire again he saw the prettiest piece of
work he had ever witnessed. He saw the gun woman crouch and stoop, saw
her hands flash in Jim Last's famous backhand flip, saw the red flame
spurt from her hips, and the Pomo half-breed flung up his hands and
fell in a heap, his face in the grass. He did not move. Only a long
ripple passed over his body. He was still as the ageless rocks, as
much a part of eternity. For a moment Billy stood, the gun hanging in
his hand. Then he knew that Tharon was coming toward him--that her
hands were on his shoulders--her deep eyes piercing his with a look
that meant more to him than all the earth beside. It was the fierce,
mother-look of changeless affection, the companion to that savage cry.
She held him in a pinching grip, and made sure that he was unhurt,
save for that scratch on the cheek.
"If he had killed you, Billy," she said tensely, "I'd a-gone a-muck
an' shot up th' whole of Lost Valley."
And the boy knew in his heart she spoke the solemn truth.
He slipped his hands down her arms and caught her fingers tightly.
"Stained!" his heart whispered to itself in stifling exhilaration, "in
spite of all--her first killin'--an' for me!"
Then he could bear her face no more, and turned to look at Kenset.
Half off the edge of his blanket the forest man lay with his face
buried in his hands, and beside him lay another gun, the smoke still
curling from its muzzle.
"By God!" said the rider, softly, "what's this?" and he ran forward to
pick up the weapon.
"Three of us!" he said aloud, "pepperin' him at once! Kenset, where
did you get this gun?"
But Kenset did not speak. His shoulders trembled, his dark head was
bowed to the earth.
"Answer me," said Billy, "for as sure's I live, this here's Buck
Courtrey's favourite gun--the gun with the untrue firin' pin. Look
here." And he held it toward Tharon who leaned near to look. True
enough.
In the right side of the plunger there was a small, shining nick, as
if, at some previous time, a tiny chink had been broken out of it.
"I found it where I saw Courtrey hide it that night they brought me
here," said Kenset in a muffled voice. "I crawled when the Pomo was
out in the Canons after meat."
"An' you used it--at last. I see. Not till th' last."
"No," said Kenset miserably, "not till the last."
Slowly Tharon knelt down beside him and put a tender arm across his
shoulders. Her face was shining--like Billy's heart.
"Mr. Kenset," she said softly, "I told you once that I was afraid you
was soft--like a woman--that you wouldn't shoot if you had a gun. An'
you said, 'You're right. I wouldn't. Not until th' last extremity.'
"What was this last extremity? Tell me. Why did you shoot when you
knew right well I'd get him myself?"
"To beat you to it!" cried the man with sudden passion, "to take the
stain myself!"
For a long moment the girl knelt there beside him and gazed unseeingly
at the inscrutable calm of the silent country. Something in the depths
of her blue eyes was changing--deepening, growing in subtle beauty, as
if the universe was suddenly become perfect, as if there was nowhere a
flaw.
"There's only one kind of man, after all, Mr. Kenset," she said at
last with a sweet dignity, "th' man who is true an' honest to th'
best there is in him, accordin' to his lights. That's my kind of
man."
* * * * *
Then she rose, and it was as if a light of activity burned up in her.
She became practical on the instant.
"I'm glad you brought th' thin rope, Billy," she said, "it's longer'n
mine. An' th' little axe, too. We'll need 'em all to get him up an'
down False Ridge. An' we must get busy right pronto. Th' Pomo killer
we'll leave where he is. The Canon Country will make him a silent
grave."