Tharon of Lost Valley Part 24

"Surely, so far as they two go. A bad man and a bad sheriff. But they are not all the officers of this County. Where and who is your Superior Judge?"

"Poor ol' Ben Garland. Weaker'n skim milk. Scared to say his soul's his own."

There was infinite scorn in her voice.

"No, it's Steptoe Service, or nothin'."

Kenset thought a moment.

"Who's the Coroner?" he asked presently.

"Jim Banner," she answered quickly, "as straight a man as ever lived.

Brave, too. He's been shot at more'n once fer takin' exception to some raw piece o' work in this Valley, fer pokin' his nose in, so to speak.

Jim Last used to say he was th' only _man_ at the Seat, which is Corvan, you know, of course."

"District Attorney?"

"Tom Nord. Keen as a razor an' married to Courtrey's sister. Now do you see why this is th' law?" She, too, tapped the gun.

Kenset frowned and looked down along the green range. He thought of the unpainted pine building in Corvan which was the Court House. A strange personnel, truly, to invest it with authort.i.ty!

"I see," he said briefly, "but there must be some way out. This is not the right way, the way that must come and last."

Tharon's lips drew into the thin line that made them like her father's. "It's th' law that's here," she said and there was an instant coldness in her voice, "an' it's th' law that'll last until Courtrey or I go down."

The man, watching, saw that thinning of the lips, the hardening of all the young lines of her face. He knew he had blundered. Talk was cheap.

It was action that counted in Lost Valley.

With a quick motion he reached over and caught the girl's hand and drew it to him, covering it with both of his.

Her eyes followed, came to rest on his face, cool, appraising, waiting.

She was, in all that had counted in his life, crude, untutored, basic.

Yet that calm look made his impulsive action seem unpardonable in the next second. However a warm surge of feeling shot through him with the quiet resting of that firm brown hand between his own, and he held it tighter. Kenset had thought he was sophisticated, that little or nothing could stir him deeply--not since Ethel Van Riper had gone to Europe as the bride of the old Count of Easthaven. That had been four years back. He had been pretty young then, but the young feel deeply.

Now he held a gun woman's hand in the thin shade of a willow clump in the heart of Lost Valley--and the blood surged in his ears, the levels and slopes danced before his vision.

"Miss Tharon," he said, for the first time using her given name, "I beg your pardon. You are strong, simple, serene. You know your land and its ways. I am an alien, an interloper--but I can't bear to think of you as waiting for the time to kill a man--or to be killed in the killing. It sickens me."

Tharon s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand from his and leaped to her feet.

"Don't talk like that!" she cried pa.s.sionately, "I don't like to hear it! I thought you were a real man, maybe, but you're not! You--you're a woman! A soft woman--I hate th' breed!"

Her face was flushed, for what reason Kenset, stunned by her vehement words, could not tell. She flung the rein up and followed it, leaping to saddle like a man.

"I tol' you we couldn't be friends!" she cried, her eyes blazing with sudden fire, "there ain't no manner of use a-tryin'."

Kenset, springing forward, caught El Rey's bit. The stallion reared and struck, but he held him down.

"There is use, Tharon," he panted. "It's vital! Since that day on Baston's steps, when you backed out past me I have had you in my mind--my thoughts by day and night--there is use, and I'll keep your hands from blood--Courtrey's or any other--if it takes my life--so help me G.o.d!"

The girl leaned down and her blue eyes blazed in his face.

"An' make me false to th' crosses on Jim Last's stone?" she cried.

"No--not you or anybody else--could do that trick! Let go!"

The next moment she had whirled out from the flickering shade of the willows and was gone around toward the north--there was only the sound of hoofs ringing on the earth. Kenset, left alone where the Silver Hollow bubbled softly above its snowy sands, pa.s.sed a trembling hand across his eyes and stood as in a trance.

What did it mean? What had he promised? What vital emotion had gripped him that his usually quiet tongue had rushed into that torrential speech that dealt with life and death? What was Tharon Last to him?

A figure of the old West! A romantic gun woman with her weapons on her hips! A rider of wild horses!

Slowly, as if he had gained an added weight of years, he reined Captain and swung himself up. He rode east from the spring toward the lacy and far-reaching skirts of the forest, and for the first time he saw the rolling country with tragic eyes.

It held deep issues--life and death and the pa.s.sing or continuing of regimes and and dynasties--but it was a wondrous country, and, come good or bad, it had become his own. He swung around in his saddle and looked far back across the Valley. He saw the golden light on its uncounted acres, the shadow falling at the foot of the great Rockface, the mighty Wall itself with the silver ribbon of the Vestal's Veil falling straight down from the upper rim, the distant town, looking always like a dull gem in a dark setting, and a thrill shot to his heart.

Yes, if he lived to do his work in the hidden Valley--if he was shot this night on his own doorstep, it was his country.

He who was alien in every way, was yet native.

Something in the depths of him came down as from far distant racial haunts and was at home.

So he rode slowly up among the scattered oaks with his hands folded on the mutilated pommel, and he knew that his lines were definitely cast.

Tharon Last rode into the Holding and dismounted in unwonted silence.

There was a frown between her brows, an unusual thing. She turned the stallion into his corral, dragged off the big saddle to hang it on its peg, flung the studded bridle on a post.

The men were not in yet. Far toward the north beyond the big corrals she could see the cattle grazing toward home. A surge of savage joy in her possessions flooded over her. These things were her own. They were what Jim Last had worked for all his life.

Not one hoof or hide should Courtrey take without swift reprisal.

Not one inch should he push her from her avowed purpose--not though all the strangers in the world came to Lost Valley and prated of blood-guilt.

But for some vague reason which she could not have a.n.a.lyzed had she wished, she went to the paled-in garden where the silver waters trickled and searched among the few flowers growing there for some blossom, sweeter, tenderer, more mild and timid than usual for the pale hands of the Virgin in the deep south room.

With the posy in her fingers she slipped quietly to her sanctuary and knelt before the statue, pensive, frowning, vaguely stirred. She whispered the prayers that Anita had taught her, but she found with a start that the words were meaningless, that she was saying them mechanically.

Her mind had been at the Silver Hollow, seeing again the forest man's dark eyes, so grave, so quiet, so deep--her right hand was conscious as it had never been in all her life before. She heard a strange man's condemning voice, felt the warmth of his hands pressed upon hers.

The mistress of Last's shook herself, both mentally and physically, and set herself to resay her prayers.

When she came out to the life and bustle of the ranch house the cattle were streaming into the far corrals under their dust, the riders were shouting, young Paula sang in the kitchen, and Anita pa.s.sed back and forth about the evening meal.