Tharon of Lost Valley Part 31

Out at the corrals Billy and Conford, Jack and Bent and Curly, put the finis.h.i.+ng 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! h.e.l.lo--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, s.h.i.+ft 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, s.h.i.+elding 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 s.p.a.ce 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----

"h.e.l.lo!" 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 gra.s.s 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 bra.s.s things s.h.i.+ning 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 d.a.m.ned 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 h.e.l.l," 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 s.h.i.+ning 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.