Tharon of Lost Valley Part 36

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' G.o.d, 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 canons. It was known to lead deceptively down among the cuts and pa.s.ses, 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' G.o.d, 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.sy 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 gra.s.s. He did not move. Only a long ripple pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d!" 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, s.h.i.+ning nick, as if, at some previous time, a tiny c.h.i.n.k 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 m.u.f.fled 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 s.h.i.+ning--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 pa.s.sion, "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."