_ CHAPTER IX. 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. _