Tharon of Lost Valley Part 17

Kenset heard the woman catch her breath, and the feeling of pity that had taken him at first for her intensified.

"No, Mr. Courtrey," he said advancing, "but you have," and he held out his hand. "I'm Kenset, from the foothills."

Courtrey, not four feet from him, did not look at the hand. Instead the glittering eyes under the hat-brim looked steadily into his with an expression that only one man in a hundred could have interpreted.

That one man, however, stood by the watering trough, his hand on the neck of a drinking horse--Cleve Whitmore who watched Courtrey without blinking.

For a moment Kenset stood so, his hand extended, waiting. Then the colour rose in his face and he drew back the hand, raised it, scrutinized it smilingly, and put it quietly on his hip.

Still smiling he raised his eyes again to Courtrey's face.

"Courtrey," he said, this time without the Mr., "I've come to Lost Valley to _stay_. I had hoped to be friends with all my neighbours. It would have made my work easier. However, with or without, I stay."

And he picked up his hat, set it on his head, walked over to the brown horse, flung up the rein, mounted and rode out of the Stronghold in utter silence.

His face was flaming, the blood of outraged dignity and deep anger beat in his temples like a drum. As he rode farther away he heard the embarra.s.sing silence broken by the hoa.r.s.e shouts of laughter of half drunken men.

"Go to it," he said aloud, clinching his fists on his saddle horn, "this is part of my duty. The Big Chief was right when he said, 'If you help the Service to tame Lost Valley you've got your work cut out.' It's a man-size job. I mustn't doubt my ability."

CHAPTER VI

EL REY AND BOLT

Tharon Last and all her followers held themselves in readiness for anything in the days that followed the taking of the herds from Courtrey's range.

They locked their doors at night, stood double guard at corral and stable. Mothers scattered throughout Lost Valley gathered in their little ones and watched the slopes and levels when their men were out.

But a strange quietness seemed to settle down upon them. That for which they waited did not materialize. Courtrey and his gun men rode into Corvan and up and down the Valley on mysterious missions which were as unsettling as open depredations, but nothing happened. In fact, Courtrey, burning with the new desire that was beginning to obsess him, was working out a new design.

He began to draw away from Lola. His triweekly visits to the Golden Cloud dropped off a bit. He took to drifting about from saloon to saloon, to being less p.r.o.nounced in his frequenting of one or two places.

His cold eyes, however, set in their narrow slits beneath the heavy brows, picked out every settler that he met and promised vague things for the future. He knew to a man who had ridden up from Last's that day, and he meant that not one should escape full payment--some time.

Now he thought of the girl who had defied him and he waited with leaping pulse. The memory of that kiss, taken by violence at her western door, was with him night and day. She stood for right and the dignity of order. He meant, for a time, to play her hand.

Therefore the settlers waited, and held their breath while they did so.

And Courtrey took to riding much more alone, to watching the slopes and stretches with a hand at his hat-brim, shading his keen eyes. He looked far and wide in the golden summer land for the sight of a silver horse cutting down the wind with a slim girl in saddle.

But Tharon was busy at the Holding and El Rey stamped and whistled in his paddock. The mistress knew that she had set stern tides flowing in the Valley, that sooner or later they were due to sweep away the peace and quiet that pervaded the cottonwoods and the singing springs. She knew that Courtrey waited, but she made the most of that waiting.

Conford and Billy and the rest of the riders made strong bolts for all the doors of the house, reinforced the fences that held the herds at night, put trick locks on all the gates.

But the time came when the close retreat became irksome to the girl, and she went from room to room in an uneasiness that was foreign to her calm and happy nature. She read over and over the two or three old books that had been at the Holding since she could remember, made new covers for the tables in the living room, kept the hands of the Virgin full of fresh offerings. But these things staled.

She began to long for the distances, the open s.p.a.ces, the feel of the swooping stallion under her sailing down the wind. Courtrey or no Courtrey, she could not fight it down. So, on a golden day when all the boys were out with the herds and only the Indian _vaqueros_ left in charge by Conford were at the stables, she flung the big saddle with its silver studs and its sombre stain on El Rey, mounted and went out and away like the wind itself. Not since the day of the raid on Courtrey's stolen herds had she been on El Rey's back and the first long leap and drop of the great horse beneath her set the lights to sparkling in her eyes, the blood to burning in her golden cheeks. She lay low on his neck and let him run, and her heart leaped up with lightness as it ever did when she rode in these thundering bursts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN FACT COURTREY, BURNING WITH THE NEW DESIRE THAT WAS BEGINNING TO OBSESS HIM, WAS WORKING OUT A NEW DESIGN]

There was no other horse in Lost Valley like the great king! Neither Redbuck nor Golden nor Drumfire! Neither Sweetheart nor Westwind! No, nor any Ironwood Bay that came down from Courtrey's Stronghold, Bolt and Arrow not excepted.

Tharon laughed and stroked the king's neck, thewed like steel beneath her hands. She had no fear of Courtrey and his hired killers. Sooner or later the issue would come, of course. Then she would kill the man as she had promised Jim Last, without a thought.

Nay, she thought of Ellen, fragile white flower, of whom she had heard.

A softening came about her young mouth at thought of her, a shadow flickered in her blue eyes for a moment. Then it was gone and she laughed, a whooping gale of joy, there alone in the green stretches between the earth and sky, with the note of El Rey's speed steadily rising in her ears.

It beat in her very heart, that singing note. She loved the king as she loved nothing else on earth, save only the memory of her father.

She went south toward the Black Coulee and she thanked her stars that her riders were grazing the herds north toward the Cup Rim. Here there was none to say her nay, to urge her with loving solicitude to go back.

The miles sped backward and she scarce noted their travel. She drew the king down a bit, slowed him from the swooping run, set him into the wonderful rock-and-away of the singlefoot and retied the ribbon on her hair. She wore no hat this day and the tawny cloud of her hair fluffed back from her forehead, straining at its bands, its loose ends standing up like fairy stuff all over her head. So, with her two arms held high above her and the reins in her teeth, she rode down by the mouth of Black Coulee--and up from the depths of the rugged wash that split the plain for seven miles there came across her path a man on a great bay horse.

Courtrey on Bolt! She knew the beautiful animal even so far away. It did not need the challenging toss of El Rey's head, the piercing scream that rang from his open mouth across the silence, nor the sudden lunge and strain against the bit.

That was Bolt, the mighty, and no mistake. None but Arrow carried his splendid head so regally, _none_ other bore so huge a cloud of mane on his arching neck, so long a tail that spread like a fan between his knees and almost swept the ground.

So, Courtrey came out of the Coulee to meet her! He would, maybe, force the issue. But Tharon was not ready for that. What was plain killing? No, she wanted more than that. She wanted to see him scourged and beaten, humiliated and robbed as he had robbed Lost Valley.

So she turned El Rey, though it took the whole strength of her young arms, and headed him back the way they had come. With the first turn and straightening leap her heart thumped hard against her ribs.

There, between her and the Holding, far distant, there were two riders--and they rode bay horses, both!

She made no doubt that they were Wylackie Bob and Black Bart, on Arrow and Slingshot.

A sudden mist of fear came across her eyes. A tightening caught her throat. She looked around the illimitable s.p.a.ces that stretched away on all sides. There was nothing in all the spreading plains but the three riders, sprung from nowhere, it seemed, and herself.

Courtrey came rapidly up toward her, swinging a bit to the west. The others, set somewhat apart to right and left, bore down upon her. It looked very much as if they meant to ride her down to the Black Coulee.

Once in its sheltering deep wash she would be helpless, cut off from escape. The Black Coulee went back into the eastern hills, lost itself up in the rugged and torturous clefts and chasms that cut the unknown ramparts, dark with forest and mysterious.

No! Not the Black Coulee and Courtrey to take her prisoner!

She looked this way and that. Then she saw that toward her right she had some margin. There was s.p.a.ce there to swing away from the man in front who came like the wind itself toward her. She caught the seeming of great speed and her heart leaped again.

She recalled the day she had asked Jack Masters if Bolt could run like El Rey.

"How do I know?" he had answered. "I know it was speed, an' that is all." True enough. It was Bolt, coming like his namesake, down along the sloping stretches.

But a great wave of exultation swept over her. She rose in her stirrups, shook an insulting hand above her, dropped on El Rey's neck, swerved him east and swept away toward the lifting skirts of the wooded hills. She heard a yell behind her, glanced back and saw that the three Ironwoods were sweeping behind her, closing in together. It was to be a race at last!

At last the whispered comparisons that had stirred under the speech of the Valley concerning the Ironwoods and the Finger Marks was to have justification. For the first and only time, in her knowledge, they were to run.

"All right!" cried Tharon aloud. "Come on, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! It's the king you come against an' Jim Last's blood! You'll never put a hand on either."

She struck her heels into El Rey's flanks, leaned over her pommel, wished she was on the king's bare back, reached her hands far out along the reins and began to call in his ear.