CHAPTER II
THE HORSES OF THE FINGER MARKS
At Last's Holding a change had taken place. The sun of spring stillshone as brightly, the work of the place went on as usual. The riderswent at dawn and came at dusk, their herds lowing across the rollinggreen spaces, the days were as busy as they had ever been, but itseemed as if Last's waited for something that would never happen, forsome one who would never come. Conford, quiet, forceful, businesslike,carried on the work without a ripple. To a casual eye all things wereas they had been. But to the keen eyes in the tanned faces of Last'sriders the change was appallingly apparent. They saw it creep day byday into their lives, felt it in the very atmosphere, and it was grimand promising.
Old Anita felt it and watched with dim and wistful eyes. Pretty youngPaula from the Pomo Indian settlement far to the north of the Valleyunder the Rockface felt it and was more silent, cat-like of step thanever. Jose, always full of laughter at his outside work, was sobered.
For this change was not material, but spiritual, and it had to do withTharon, who was now the mistress of Last's.
She no longer sang her wordless songs, no longer played for hours onthe little old melodeon by the western door. Something had gone fromthe brightness of her face, a shadow had come instead. She was just asswift and gentle in her care for all the things of every day, asefficient and painstaking, but she did not laugh, and the tiny linesthat had characterized her father's blue eyes, began to showdistinctly about her own.
They began to take on the look of great distances, as if she gazedfar.
And for exactly three hours each day there could be heard themonotonous bark-bark-bark of the big guns Jim Last had given her inhis final hour. To Billy Brent there was something terrible in this.Bred to violence and the quick disasters of the country as he was, hecould not reconcile this grim practice with Tharon Last, the sane andloving girl who could not bear the sight of suffering.
"I tell you, Curly," he complained to his friend of nights when theycame in and lounged in the soft dusk by the bunk-house, "it'sunnatural. Not that I don't pay full respect to Jim Last's memory,an' him th' best man in all this hell-bent Valley, but it ain't rightan' natural fer no woman t' do what she's doin'. Ain't she Jim Last'sown daughter already with th' guns? Sure. Can drive a nail nigh as faras he could. Quick as Wylackie Bob on th' draw an' as certain, now.Then why must she keep it up?"
Curly, more silent in his ways but given to thought, studied the starsthat rode the darkening heavens and shook his head.
"Let her alone," he said once, "it was Last's command, an' he knewwhat he was about even if he was toppin' th' rise of the Big Divide.
"He said 'you'll have to pro--'--you rec'lect? He meant _protect_ an'unless I miss my guess, Billy, he'd have added '_yourself_' if th'hand of Ol' Man Death hadn't stopped his words. Somethin' happened outthere in th' Cup Rim that day when Last got his that had to do withTharon, an' he knew she'd be in danger. Let her alone."
So Billy let her alone, as did the rest. She went her ways, saw to thegarden and made the butter in the cool springhouse, and sat in thewindow seat in the twilights. She liked to have the men come in asusual, but the talk these times was desultory, failing and brighteningwith forced topics, to fail again and drop into silence while the dimred lights of the smokers glowed in the shadows.
Time and again she stirred and sighed, and they knew that once againshe waited for Jim Last, listened for the clip-clap of El Rey cominghome along the sounding ranges.
Once, on a night when there was no moon and the tree-toads sang in thecottonwoods by the spring, the girl, sitting so in the familiarwindow, suddenly dropped her head on her knees and sobbed sharply inthe silence.
"Never again!" she said thickly from the folds of her denim skirt,"I'll never see him comin' home again!"
The riders stirred. Sympathy ached in their hearts, but not a man hadspeech to comfort her. It was Billy, the impulsive, who reached a handto her shoulder and gripped it hard. Tharon reached up and touched thehand in gratitude.
It was about this time, when the master of Last's Holding had lain amonth beneath the staring mound under the pine tree out to the eastwhere they had buried Harkness, that Jose finished a work of art. Formany days he had laboured secretly in a calf-shed out behind the smallcorrals, and in his slim dark fingers there was beauty unleashed.Finest carving he knew, since his forbears, peons across the Border,had spent their lives upon the beams of the Missions. None had taughtJose. It was in his blood. Therefore, from a block of the hard greystone of the region, which was almost like granite, he fashioned across, as tall as Tharon herself, struck it out freehand and true, andset upon its austere face fine tracery of vines and Jim Last's name.He took into the secret Billy and Curly, since these two he was sureof, and together they hauled the huge thing out and set it up.
When Tharon, looking to the east with dawn, as was her habit, beheldthis silent tribute to the man she had so loved, she leaned herforehead against the deep window-case and wept from the depths.
Then she went out to see it and with a knife she set her own markthereon--a tiny cross scratched in the headpiece, another in the armthat stretched toward all that was mortal of poor Harkness.
"Two," she said, dry-eyed, while the glorious dawn shot up to bathethe world in glory, "full pay for you both."
* * * * *
El Rey, stamping in his own corral, lifted his beautiful head, scannedthe wide reaches that spread away in living green, and tossing up hismuzzle, sent out on the silence a ringing call. He cocked his silverears and listened. No clear-cut human whistle answered him. Once morehe called and listened.
Then he lowered his head and stepped along the fence. His great body,shining like blue satin with a silver frost upon it, gave and liftedwith every step. The pastern joints above his striped hoofs wereresilient as pliant springs. The muscles rippled in his shoulders, theblue-white cascade of his silver tail flowed to his heels, his manewas like a cloud upon the arch of his neck. He was strength and beautyincarnate, a monster machine of living might.
Unrest was upon him. Life had become stagnant, a tasteless thing. Hewas keen for the open stretches, honing to be gone down the wind. Hefretted and ate out his heart for the freedom of the range. Old Anita,passing at some work or other, stopped and gazed at him for acompassionate moment.
"You, too, _grande caballo_," she said, "there is naught but grief atLast's Holding. _Tharone querida_" she called into the house, "comehere."
Tharon came and stood in the kitchen door.
"What, Anita?" she asked gently.
"El Rey," answered the old woman, "he calls and calls and none come tohim. He, too, needs help, _Corazon_. Why not take him for a run alongthe plain? It will help you both."
For a long time the girl stood, considering.
"I have not cared to ride lately, Anita," she said, "but you areright. El Rey should not be left to fret."
She stepped back in the house, then came out, and she had addednothing to her attire save her daddy's belt and guns. Without theseshe never left the Holding now.
Bareheaded, slender, she was a thing of beauty, and there was a quietcommand about her which subdued the great El Rey himself, the proudesthorse in all the Valley, outside of Courtrey's Ironwoods, Bolt andArrow.
Between these three horses there was much comment and discussion,though they had never been tested out together.
She found a bridle on a corral post, a strong affair of rawhide,heavily ornamented with silver, its bit a Spanish spade. Without thisshe could not hold the stallion, and he was no pet to come at hercaressing call of the double notes.
Only Jim Last himself had ever tamed El Rey to do his bidding by wordof mouth. The horse had had one master. He would never have another.
Even now, when Tharon bridled him and opened the big gate, promisinghim his long-desired flight, he seemed not to see her, his beautifulbig eyes looked through, beyond her, as if he sought another. Therewas some on
e for whom he waited, listened.
From a block of wood set in the yard the girl gathered the rein tightin her hand, balanced a moment, and leaped up astride the shiningback.
With a snort like a pistol shot El Rey flung up his great head, leapedinto the air and was gone. Around the corner of the adobe house hewent, out across the trampled yard, and away along the open to thesouth, running level and free. With the first sink-and-lift Tharon hadslipped back a full span. Now she wound her fingers in the white cloudof mane that flailed her face and edged up, inch by inch. When herknees were well up on the huge shoulders that worked beneath thempowerfully, she gathered the reins, one in each hand, leaned downalong the outstretched neck and let the great king run. The wind sangby her ears in a rising whine, the green prairie was a flowing seabeneath her, the thunder of the pounding hoofs was stupendous music.Tharon shut her eyes and rode, and for the first time since Jim Last'sdeath a sense of joy rose in her like a tide.
She had ridden El Rey before, many times. She had felt him sailbeneath her down the open prairies and always it was so, as if theearth slid by, as if the note of the wind lifted minute by minute. Shehad wondered often about this--how long it would continue to rise withEl Rey's rising speed, how long before he would reach a maximum abovewhich he could not go, a place where the singing note would remainfixed.
She had never known him reach that point. Always he could go faster.Always he had reserves.
Far out ahead she saw a bunch of cattle feeding. They were lazilycircling in a wide arc, content under the beaming sun. Near them sat arider on a buckskin horse, Bent Smith on Golden. This Golden was oneof the prides of Last's Holding. Bigger than Drumfire or Redbuck, heranked next to El Rey himself in speed, for his slim legs, slappedsmartly with the distinguishing finger marks on the outside of theknee, were long and shapely, his back short-coupled and strong, hiswithers low, his narrow hips high. Tharon bore hard on El Rey's bit,leaned her body to the left, and they swung in toward Bent and Goldenin a beautiful sweeping curve that brought the cowboy up in hisstirrups with his hat a-wave above him.
"Good girl!" he yelled with leaping gladness as the superb pair shotby. "Good girl! Go to it!"
Tharon loosed a hand long enough to wave back and was gone, on downthe sloping land toward the country of the Black Coulee, her darkskirts fluttering at her knees, the two heavy guns pounding her thighsat every jump.
It was a long time before El Rey came down from his sweeping flight.
He had been too long holden in cramping bars. The free winds and therolling earth filled him with a sort of madness. He ran with joy andthe surety of unbounded power.
The rider, left far behind, watched them anxiously for a time, thoughtof following, glanced at his cattle, remembered the gun man's heritageand turned to his business.
The sun was well down over the western Rockface when Tharon and El Reycame back to Last's Holding. The riders were bringing in the cattle,dust was rising in clouds above the moving masses. From the ranchhouse came the savory smells of cooking.
NEAR THEM SAT A RIDER ON A BUCKSKIN HORSE]
The stallion was limber as a willow. He tossed his handsome head andhis eyes were bright as stars set in his silver face. Life was at hightide in him, flowing magnificently. Tharon, her cheeks whipped intopulsing colour by the wind and the bounding speed, her tawny maneloosed from its bands and flying in a cloud behind her, smoothed backfrom her face, looked wild as an Indian. As she drew up and satwatching the work of the evening, she smiled for the first time inmany days, and Jack Masters, passing, felt his heart leap withgladness.
When the mistress of Last's was sad, so were her people.
When the last big corral gate had swung to and the boys turned in tounsaddle, she touched El Rey with a toe and went over among them.
"Line up the horses, boys," she said, "I want to see them all togetheronce more. Somethin' came back in me today--somethin' I been missingfor a long time. I'll be myself again."
Billy turned Redbuck to face her, dropped his rein. Curly rode up onDrumfire. These two were red roans, dead matches. Bent brought Goldenand stood him alongside. From far at the back of the corral theycalled Conford and Jack, who came wondering, the former on Sweetheart,true sister of El Rey, almost as big, almost as fast, almost asbeautiful.
Silver-blue roan, silver-pointed, slim, graceful, springy, she had nota single dark spot on her except the sharp black bars of the fingermarks outside her knees.
"You darlin'!" said Tharon as she wheeled in line.
Then came Jack on Westwind, and he was another buckskin, paler thanGolden, most marvelously pointed in pure chestnut brown. His fingermarks were brown instead of black--the only horse at the Holding sodistinguished, for no matter of what shade or colour, in all theothers these peculiar marks were jet black. Five splendid creaturesthey stood and pounded the ringing earth, tossed their heads andwaited, though they had all been far that day and it was feedingtime.
Out in the horse corrals there were many more of their breed, slim,wiry horses, toughened and hardened by long hours and daily work, butthese were the flower of Last's, the prized favourites.
For a long time Tharon sat and watched them, noting their perfectcondition, their glistening skins, their shining hoofs, many of whichwere striped, another characteristic.
"I don't believe," she said at last, "that there's a bunch of horsesin Lost Valley to come nigh 'em. Ironwoods or anything else--I'd backth' Finger Marks."
"So would we," said Conford quietly, "though we've seen th' Ironwoodsrun--a little."
"That's th' word, Burt," said Curly, "a little. Who of us has everseen Courtrey let Bolt run like he wanted to? Not a darned one. I'veseen that big bay devil pull till th' blood dripped from his mouth."
"Sure," put in Masters, "I've seen that, too--but I was lyin' up onth' Cup Rim oncet, watchin' a couple mavericks fer funny work, an'Courtrey an' Wylackie Bob come along down that way on Bolt an'Arrow--an' they wasn't a-holdin' them then. Lord, Lord, how they wasgoin'! Two long red streaks as level as your hand, an' I swear myheart came up in my throat to see 'em, an' I almost hollered. It waspretty work--pretty work, an' no mistake."
Tharon looked over at him.
"Fast as El Rey, Jack?"
"Who could tell?" said the man. "I know it was some speed, an' that isall."
The girl struck a hand on the king's shoulder so passionately that hejumped and snorted.
"Some day," she said tensely, "El Rey will run th' Ironwoods off theirfeet--an' I'll run th' heart out of their master, damn him! Put th'horses out. It's supper time."
She threw her right limb over the stallion's neck swiftly and withlithe grace, and slid abruptly to the ground.
As she did so there came the sound of hoofs on the hard earth at thecorner of the house, and a stranger came sharply into sight.
He drew up and nodded. Conford, just turning away, turned quickly backand came forward.
"Howdy," he said.
The man, tall, lean, dark, returned the salute with another nod.
He was covered with dust, as if he had ridden far and been a long timecoming. His clothes were much the worse for wear, but they were mostlyleather, which takes wear standing, as it were. The wide hat pulledlow over his piercing dark eyes, was ornamented with a vanity ofsilver.
The riding cuffs at his wrists were studded profusely with the samemetal, as was the wide belt that spanned his narrow waist.
He wore a three days' beard, and a black moustache dropped its longpoints to the edge of his jaw. Black hair showed beneath the hat. Hewas a remarkable figure, even in Lost Valley, and he commandedattention.
He carried the customary two guns of the country, and he bestrode ahorse that was as noticeable as himself.
This horse was no denizen of Lost Valley. It was an utter alien. Itscolour was a dingy black, as if it had recently been through fire, itscoat rough and unkempt. Its long head was heavy and slug-like, itsnose of the type known among horsemen as Roman. It was roughly built,raw-b
oned and angular, and of so stupendous a size that the man atop,who was six foot tall himself, seemed small by comparison.
However, for all its ugliness, it possessed a seeming of vast power, asuggestion of great strength.
The stranger looked the group over with his keen, hard eyes, and spokein a slow drawl.
"I reckon," he said, "I'm a-ridin' th' wrong trail. I hain't expectedhyar."
And turning abruptly, without another word, he jogged away around thehouse and started down the long slope already greying with the comingnight.
The foreman and the five punchers clamped over to the corner of thekitchen and watched him in speculative silence. Tharon came along andstood by Billy, her hand on the boy's arm. To Billy that sober touchconfused the distances, set the strange rider dancing on the slope.
"H'm," said Conford, his grey eyes narrow, "come from far an's goin'somewheres. I'll watch that duck. He looks like he's a record man tome."
At supper there was much speculation about the stranger.
"I'll lay a month's pay he come from Texas," said Billy, casting aside glance at his pal Curly, "them long lankys usually do. An'somehow it shows in their eyes, sort o' fierce an'--"
"Billy," said Tharon severely, "if I was Curly I'd take a fall out ofyou. He can do it, _you_ know that an' _I_ know it."
"Thanks, Miss Tharon," said Curly in his soft Southern drawl, "if youfeel that-a-way about it, w'y, I don't care what _no_ littleyellow-headed whipper-snapper from up Wyomin' way says to th'contrary."
Billy was a bit abashed, but he stubbornly supported his contentionthat the stranger was a bad-man from Texas.
"Plenty bad-men right here in Lost Valley," said the girl quietly,"an' th' breed ain't dyin' out as I can see. Th' settlers need a newleader--now that Jim Last's gone." And she fell to playing absentlywith her fork upon the cloth.
The boys changed the subject hurriedly.
"I found a dead brandin' fire in th' Cup Rim yesterday, Burt," saidMasters, "quite a scrabbled space around it. Looked like some one'dbranded several calves."
"Don't doubt it," said the foreman. "Careful as we are there's alwayslikely to be stragglers. An' to be a straggler's to be a goner inthis man's land."
"Unless he belongs t' Last's," said the irrepressible Billy. "I'll laythat fer every calf branded by Courtrey's gang we'll get back two."
"Billy," said Tharon again, "Jim Last wasn't a thief. Neither will hispeople be thieves. For every calf branded by Courtrey, _one calf_wearin' th' J. L.--an' one calf only. We don't steal, but we won'tlose."
"You bet your boots an' spurs throwed in, we won't," said the boyfervently.
As they rose from the table with all the racket of out-door men therecame once more the sound of a horse's hoofs on the hard earthoutside.
Last's Holding was a vast sounding-board. No one on horseback couldcome near without advertising his arrival far ahead.
This time it was no stranger. Tharon went to the western door to bidhim 'light.
It was John Dement from down at the Rolling Cove. He was a thin, wornman, who looked ten years beyond his forty, his face wrinkled by theconstant fret and worry of the constant loser.
Tonight he was strung up like a wire. His voice shook when he returnedthe hearty greetings that met him.
"Boys," he said abruptly, "an' Tharon--I come t' tell ye allgood-bye."
"Good-bye! John, what you mean?"
Tharon went forward and put a hand on his arm. Her blue eyes searchedhis face.
The man stood by his horse and struck a tragic fist in a hard palm.
"That's it. I give up. I'm done. I'm goin' down the wall come day--mean' my woman an' th' two boys. Got our duffle ready packed, an' Lordknows, it ain't enough t' heft th' horses. After five year!"
There was the sound of the hopeless tears of masculine failure in theman's tragic voice. His fingers twisted his flabby hat.
"Hold up," said Conford, pushing nearer, "straighten out a bit,Dement. Now, tell us what's up."
"Th' last head--th' last hoof--run off last night as we was comin' inwith 'em a leetle mite late. Had ben up Black Coulee way, an' it gotdark on us. Just as we got abreast o' th' mouth of th' Coulee, whereth' poplars grow, three men come a-boilin' out. They was on fasthorses--o' course--an' right into th' bunch they went, hell-bent.Stampeded the hull lot. You know my bunch'd got down t' about ahundred head--don't know what I ben a-hangin' on fer, only a manhates t' give up an' own hisself beat out. An' my woman--she's afighter.
"She kep' standin' at my back like, oh, like--well, she kep' a-sayin''We'll win out yet, John, you see. Right'll win ev'ry time.' You seewe are just ready to get th' patent on our land. She couldn't givethat up, seems like. All this time gone an' nothin' gained. So we bena-hangin' on when things went from bad to worse. Th' herd's beena-goin' down an' down. Calves with their tongues slit so's they'd losetheir mothers--fed up in some coulee by hand an' branded. Knowed 'emby my own colour cattle, w'ich I drove in here five year ago--th'yellers.
"Mothers killed outright an' th' calves branded. Oh, I know itall--but what could I do? Kep' gettin' poorer an' poorer. Couldn'tafford enough riders t' protect 'em. Then couldn't afford any an'tried t' make it go as th' boys got older. Courtrey, damn him, wantsme offen that piece o' land a-fore th' patent's granted. Him with histwenty thousan' acres of Lost Valley now! An' how'd he get it? Falseentry, that's what! How many men's come in here, took up land, 'soldout' to Courtrey an' went? Or didn't go. A lot of 'em _didn't go_. Weall know that. An' who dares to speak in a whisper about it? Th' menthat did wouldn't go--never--nowheres."
There was the bitterness of utter defeat and hatred in the shakingvoice. The tree-toads, beginning their nightly chorus from the wetplaces below the cottonwoods, emphasized the dreariness of therecital, the ancient hopelessness of the weak beneath the heel of theoppressor.
Dement ceased speaking and stood in silhouette against the lastyellow-and-black of the dead sunset. The protruding apple in hishawk-like throat worked up and down grotesquely.
For a long moment there was utter silence.
Then he began again.
"I knowed I wasn't welcome in th' Valley when I hadn't ben here more'nsix months. Th' first leetle string o' fence I put up fer corrals wentdown, mysterious, as fast as I could fix it. Th' woman's garden wasbroke open an' trampled to dust by cattle, drove in. Winter ketched uswith mighty leetle t' eat in th' way o' truck. Next year she guardedit herself some nights, sleepin' by day, an' oncet she took a shot atsome one that come prowlin' around. They let her fence alone afterthat, but what'd they do outside? Killed all th' hogs we had one nightan' piled 'em in a heap in th' front door yard! That was hint enough,but I kep' a-thinkin' that ef we behaved decent like, an' minded ourown business we sartainly must win out. We did," he added grimly aftera little pause, "like hell. An' how many others of th' settlers hasgone through th' like? We ain't no tin gods ourselves, I own, but wegot t' fight fire with fire. Only I ain't got no more light-wood," hefinished quaintly, "I got to quit."
There was another silence while the tree-toads sang. Then the man heldout his hand, hardened and warped with the unceasing toil of thosetragic years.
"Good-bye, Tharon," he said, "I wisht Jim Last was here. With him goneLost Valley's in Courtrey's hand an' no mistake. He was th' only mandared face him an' hold his own. Last's was th' only head th' weakerfaction had, its master their only leader. While he lived we had someshow, us leetle fellers. Now there ain't no leader. Th' ranchers'll goout fast now. It'll be a one-man valley."
In the soft darkness Tharon took the extended hand, held it a momentand laid her other one upon it.
"John Dement," she quietly said, "I want you to go home an' bar yourhouse for fight. Fix up your fences, unpack your duffle. In themorning my riders will drive down to your place a hundred head o'cattle. You put your brand on em. There's goin' to be no one-mandoin's in Lost Valley yet awhile--not while Jim Last's daughterlives. See," she dropped his hand and pointed to the east where thetall pine lifted to
the stars, "out yonder there's a cross at JimLast's grave--an' there's my mark on it. Th' settlers have a leaderstill--an' I name myself that leader. I'm set against Courtrey, nowan' forever. I mean to fight him t' th' last inch o' ground in LostValley, th' last word o' law, th' last drop o' blood, both his an'mine. You go down among 'em--th' settlers--an' take 'em that word fromme. Tell 'em Jim Last's daughter stands facin' Courtrey, an' she'llneed at her back t' fight him every man in Lost Valley that ain't acoward."
When the settler had gone, incoherent and half-incredulous, Conforddrew a long breath and looked at his mistress in the dusk.
"Tharon, dear," he said so gently that his words were like a caress"you're jest a-breakin' your riders' hearts. You're heapin' anxiety onus mountain-high. Now what on earth'll we do?"
Young Billy Brent pushed near and slapped a hand against a doubledfist. His eyes were sparkling like harbour lights, his voice was likethe sound of running fire.
"Do?" he cried. "Do? We'll stand behind her so tight they can't seedaylight through, an' we'll fight with an' for her every inch o' thatway, every word o' that law, every drop o' that blood! Who saysLast's ain't on th' map in Lost Valley?" Tharon smiled and touched himagain.
"Billy," she said softly, "you're after my own heart. Now get to bed.I want t' think."
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