“Turn out th’ light, Bent,” she said, “somehow I feel like shadows tonight.”
So they sat about in the great room, black with the darkness of the soft spring night, and like the true worshippers they were, they did not speak. Only the red butts of their cigarettes glowed and faded, to glow again and again fade out. Tharon sat curled in the window, her graceful limbs drawn up to her chin, her eyes half closed, her keen ears open like a forest creature’s. She was listening for the marked rhythm of the great El Rey, the clap-clap, clap-clap of the king of Last’s Holding as he singlefooted down the hollow slopes of the lifting eastern range.
And as she waited she thought of many things. Odd little happenings of her childhood came back to her––the time she had caught her father killing the winter’s beef, had wept in hysterical pity and forbidden him to finish.
They had had no meat those long months following––and she had so tired of beans, that she had never been able to eat them since. She smiled in the dusk as she recalled Jim Last’s life-long indulgence of her.
And the time she had wanted to make her own knee-short dresses as long as Anita’s, to sweep the floors, with fringe upon them and stripes of bright print.
She had worn them so––at twelve––until she found that they hindered the free use of her young limbs in mounting a horse, free-foot and bareback. Then, once again the memory of her father’s face when she questioned him concerning her mother.
“Boys,” she said suddenly, smiling to herself, “did you ever know a man like my dad?”
There was a movement among the lounging riders, a shifting of position, a striking of cigarette ash.
“No, sir,” said Billy promptly, “there hain’t another man’s good with a gun as him, not anywhere’s in Lost Valley. Not even Buck Courtrey himself. I’d back Jim Last against him, even, in fair-draw. Why?”
“Oh, nothin’,” said the girl, “only––listen––Glory!” she added slipping down from the window to stand quietly in the gloom, “that’s him now! I was wishin’ hard he’d come. Say––listen–––Why,––there’s somethin’ gone wrong with El Rey’s feet! 1––2–––3, 4, 5, 6–––1––2––Boys––he’s breakin’! Th’ king ain’t singlefootin’ right, for th’ first time since Jim Last put a halter on him! Come––come quick!”
Ordinarily Tharon was a bit slow in her movements, as the very graceful often are. Now she was across the room to the western door before a man had moved. They joined her there and she stood at attention, one hand at her breast, the breath held still in her throat. The light, shining through from the eating room beyond, made a halo of her tawny hair. Silently the riders grouped about her and listened.
Sure enough. Down along the range that rang as some open stretches do, there came the clip-clap of a hurrying horse, only now the hoof beats were regular for a little space, to break, halt, start on, and again ring true in the beautiful syncopation of the born singlefooter. The king was coming home, but, alas! not as he had ever come before, in full flight, proud and powerful. He held his speed and sacrificed his certainty to the man who clung desperately to the saddle horn and swayed in wide arcs, so that he must shift continually to keep under him.
Into the dim glow of light at the open door came El Rey at last, great blue-silver stallion, his big eyes shining like phosphorus, his nostrils wide with horror of the pungent crimson wash that painted his right shoulder.
He stopped at the door-stone, his duty done.
“Dad!” screamed Tharon, shrill as a bugle, for Jim Last, white and dull as a moon in fog, let go his desperate hold on the pommel and slid, deadweight, into the reaching arms that circled him.
They carried him into the living room. Before they had him safely on the wide couch where the Indian blankets glowed, Tharon, trembling but efficient, had lighted the hanging lamp above the table.
Then she pushed the men aside and knelt beside him.
“Dad,” she said clearly, “Jim! Jim Last!”
But the gaining of his goal had been too much. For a moment the flickering light in him died down to ashes. Tharon, her face as white as his own, waited in a man-like quiet. She held his stiffened hands and her eyes burned upon his features. With a deadly knowledge she was printing them indelibly upon her heart.
Presently Jim Last sighed and opened his eyes. They sought hers and he smiled, a tender lighting from within. He fumbled for the buckle of his gun-belt. The girl unclasped it and pulled it free. She noticed that both guns were in their holsters.
“Put it on,” whispered the master of Last’s Holding.
Without a question Tharon stood up and buckled the belt about her slender waist.
Her father raising himself with difficulty on an elbow, wet his lips.
“Tharon, my girl,” he said, “show your dad th’ backhand flip.”
Strange play, this, when every second counted, but Last’s daughter obeyed him to the letter.
She stepped clear by the table, stood at attention a second, and, with a peculiar outward whirl, lightning-quick, of her two wrists, had him covered with the big blue guns.
He nodded.
“Good as I learned ye,” he whispered, “make it better.”
“I will,” promised Tharon swiftly.
The man closed his eyes, swayed, recovered as Conford caught him, and brightened again.
“Now th’ under-sling.”
Again she obeyed, replacing the weapons, standing that second at attention, and flipping them from the holsters so quickly that the eye could scarcely catch the motion. Both draws were peculiar––and peculiarly Last’s own. “Good girl,” he said with a husk grown suddenly in his voice, “take––three hours––a day. I want t’ leave you th’ best gun-handler in Lost Valley––because, my girl––you’ll––have––to––to––pro–––”
He ceased, wilting forward in Conford’s arms.
Then he opened his eyes again for one last smile at the daughter he had loved above all things on earth, save and except the memory of the woman who had given her to him.
For once in her life Tharon did not wait his finished speech. She saw the Hand reach out of the shadows and flung herself upon his breast where the blood still seeped and fairly forced the last flutter of life to brighten in him. She kissed his rugged cheek.
“Who, Dad,” she called into his dulling senses, “tell me who? I’ll get him, so help me God!” and she loosed one hand to cross herself, as old Anita had taught her.
But the promise was late. None knew whether or not Jim Last heard it, for before the last word was done the breath had ceased in his throat.
Another twilight came down upon Lost Valley. The wide ranges lay dim and mysterious, grey and pink and lavendar, as if the hand of a Master Painter had coloured them, as indeed it had. The Rockface at the west was black with shadow for all its rugged miles, the eastern uplands were bathed and aglow with purplish crimson light.
In Corvan lights twinkled all up and down the one main street. Horses were tied at the hitch-racks and among them were the Ironwoods from Courtrey’s Stronghold, beautiful big creatures, blood-bay, black-pointed, noticeable in any bunch. There were no Finger Marks, however, the blue roans, red roans and buckskins with the four black stripes on the outside of the knee, as if one had slapped them with a tarred hand, which hailed from Last’s. There were horses from all up and down the Valley. Cow ponies and half-breeds of the Ironwood stock which Courtrey would not keep at the Stronghold but was too close to kill, shouldered pintos from the Indian settlements, big, half-wild horses from over the mountains at the North. Inside the brightly lighted saloons men passed back and forth, drank neat liquor at the worn bars, played at the green felt and canvas covered tables. At one, The Golden Cloud, more pretentious than the rest, there foregathered the leading spirits of the Valley. Here Courtrey came and played and drank, his henchmen with him. He was in high mettle this night. Always a contained man, slow to laughter and to speech, he seemed to have unbent more than u
sual, to respond to the human nature about him. He was not playing steadily as was his wont. He took a turn at poker with three men from the south of the Valley where the river ran out of the Bottle Neck, won a hand or two, threw down the cards and swung away to talk a moment with this one, listen a moment where those two spoke of hushed matters. Always when he came near he was accorded deference. There was nothing sacred from Courtrey of the Stronghold, seated like a feudal place at the north head of Lost Valley, no conversation so private that he could not come in on it if he chose.
For Courtrey was the king of the country, undisputed sovereign, the best gun man north of the Rio Grand and south of the Line, if one excepted Jim Last. With him tonight were Black Bart, tall, swarthy, gimlet-eyed, a helf-breed Mexican, and Wylackie Bob his right-hand man. Without these two he seldom moved. They were both able lieutenants, experts with firearms. A formidable trio, the three went where and when they listed, and few disputed their right-of-way.
Courtrey, a smile in his dark eyes, the wide black hat at an angle on his iron-grey hair, leaned against the high bar and scanned the crowded room where the riders played and laughed and swore with abandon.
“Heard anything more about Cañon Jim?” he asked Bullard, the proprietor of The Golden Cloud, “ain’t come in yet?”
Bullard shook his head.
“No––nor he won’t, according to my notion. Think he mistook th’ False Ridge drop. Ain’t no man could make it up again without th’ hammer spike an’ rope.”
“H’m––don’t know. Don’t know,” mused Courtrey. “I’ve always thought it could be done. There ought to be a way on th’ other side, seems like.”
“Well, ought an’ is is two diff’rent things, Buck,” grinned Bullard.
“Sure,” nodded the king, “sure. An’ yet––”
“Hello, Buck.”
A soft hand touched Courtrey’s shoulder with a subtle caress. He wheeled on the instant, ready, alert. Then he smiled and reaching up, took the hand and held it openly.
“Hello, Lola,” he said, “how goes it?”
The newcomer was a woman, full, rounded, dark, and she was past-master of men––as witness the slow glance that she turned interestedly out over the teeming room, even while the pulse in the wrist in Courtrey’s clasp leaped like a racer. She was a perfect specimen of a certain type, beautiful after a resplendent fashion, full of eye and lip, confident, calm. She was brilliantly clad in crimson and black, and rings of value shone on her ivory-like hands.
Lola of the Golden Cloud was known all over Lost Valley. Men who had no women worshipped her––and some who had, also. At the Stronghold at the Valley’s head there was a woman who hated her, though she had never set eyes on her––Courtrey’s wife.
If Lola knew this she had never mentioned it, wise creature that she was. Proud of her beauty and her power she had reigned at The Golden Cloud in supreme indifference, even to her men themselves, it seemed, though hidden undercurrents ran strong in her. Which way they tended many a reckless buck of Lost Valley would have given much to know, among them Courtrey himself.
Now she pulled her hand away from him and sauntered over to a table where five men sat playing, laid it upon the shoulder of one of them, leaned down and looked at the cards in his hand.
The man, a tall stripling in a silver-studded belt, looked up, flattered.
Courtrey by the bar watched her, still smiling. Then he turned back to Bullard and went on with his conversation.
Over by the wall a man on a raised dais began to tune an ancient fiddle.
Two more women came in from somewhere at the back, a big blooming girl by the name of Sadie, and a small red-head, tragically faded, with soft brown eyes that should never have looked upon Bullard’s. Two men rose and took them as the tune, an old-fashioned waltz, began to ripple under the fingers of the fiddler, who was a born musician, and the four swung down between the tables and the bar. The Golden Cloud was in full swing, running free for the night, though the soft twilight was scarcely faded from the beautiful country without.
Slip––step, slip––step––went the dancing feet to the accompaniment of rattling spurs. These men were lithe and active, able to dance with amazing grace in chaps and the full accoutrement of the rider. They even wore their broad brimmed hats.
Why should they not, since none objected?
Bullard, solid, stocky, red-faced, leaned on his bar and watched the busy room with pleased eyes.
He did not hear a voice which called his name, once or twice, among the jumble of sounds. Presently an odd figure came round the end of the bar from a door that opened there into the mysterious back regions of the place and elbowed in to face him.
This was a little old man, weazened and bent, his unkempt head thrust forward from hunched shoulders. He dragged two grain sacks behind him, and he was so grotesquely bow-legged that the first sight of him always provoked laughter. This was old Pete the snow-packer, bound on his nightly trip to the hills. Outside his burros waited, their pack-saddles empty.
By dawn they would come down from the world’s rim, the grain sacks bulging with hard-packed snow for the cooling of Bullard’s liquor.
“Dick,” he said when he faced his employer, “here ’tis time t’ start an’ there ain’t a damned bit o’ grub put up fer me! Ef ye don’t make that pig-tailed Chink pay ’tention t’ my wants, I quit! I quit, I tell ye!”
And he emphasized his vehement protest by whirling the bags over his head and flailing them upon the floor.
A roar of laughter greeted him, which brought dim tears of indignation to his old eyes.
“Ye don’t care a damn!” he whimpered in impotent rage. “Jes’ ’cause it’s me. Ef ’twas yer ol’ Chink, now––if ’twas him, th’ ol’ he-pigtail, ye’d–––”
“Hold on, Pete,” said Bullard, slapping an indulgent hand on the grotesque shoulder, “You go tell Wan Lee that if he don’t put up th’ best lunch in camp for you, an’ muy pronto at that, I’ll come in an’ skin him alive. Tell him–––”
But Bullard was never to finish that sentence.
There was a sound of running horses stopping square at the rack without, the rattle of chains, the creak of saddles.
Booted feet struck the boards of the porch, and almost upon the instant the great iron door of The Golden Cloud swung inward.
The dancers stopped in their stride, the players laid down their cards, the noise of the room ceased with the suddenness that characterized the time and place, for Lost Valley was quick upon the trigger, tragedy often swept in upon hilarity.
In the opening stood Tharon Last, her blue eyes black and sparkling, her tawny skin cream white, her lips tight-set and pale. She wore a plain dark dress that buttoned up the front, and at her hips there hung her father’s famous guns. Her two hands rested on their butts.
Behind her head against the starlight there was the dim suggestion of massed sombreros.
For a moment she stood so in breathless silence, scanning the room.
Then her glance came to rest on the face of Buck Courtrey.
“Men,” she said clearly, “we buried Jim Last today. El Rey brought him home last night––finished. You all know he was a gun man––th’ best in these parts. It was no gun man that killed him, in fair-an’-open, for he was shot in th’ back. It was a skunk, a coyote, a son-of-th’-devil, an’ I’m goin’ to kill him.”
At the last word there was a lightning movement at the bar as Courtrey’s hand flashed at his hip, a flash of fire, a shot that went high and lodged in the deep beam above the door, for the weazened form of the snow-packer had leaped up against him in the same instant.
The girl had not moved. Her hands still rested on the guns in their holsters. Now a grim smile curled her mouth, but her eyes did not laugh.
“I’m a-goin’ t’ kill him,” she said quietly, still in that clear voice, “but I’ll do it accordin’ to th’ law Jim Last laid down to me all my life––in certainty. I know––but I’ll prove
. We hain’t no assassins, Jim Last an’ me. Some day I’ll draw––an’ my father’s killer must beat me to it.”
Without another word Tharon backed out on the porch, the door swung to at the pull of an unseen hand on the iron strap by the hinge.
There was again the rattle and creak, the whirl of hoofs, and in the breathless stillness that lasted for a few seconds, there came to the strained ears in the Golden Cloud the clip-clap of a singlefooter as the great El Rey led out of town.
Then Buck Courtrey, flushed and unsmiling, sent his coldly narrowed eyes over the crowded room, man by man. Laughter came, a trifle cracked and forced, cards slapped on the tables, chairs creaked as the players drew up again, the dancers swung into step as the fiddle took up its interrupted strain.
Only Lola, over by the door, looked for a pregnant moment at Courtrey’s face, and shut her lips in a hard, straight line.
Then, lastly, the cold eyes of the king came down to rest upon the weazened figure of the snow-packer busily engaged in rolling up his sacks for departure. If the strange old creature knew and felt their promise, he gave no sign as he trundled himself outdoors on his bandy legs.
“Skunks,” said Old Pete, as he fumbled with his straps about the patient burros, “are plumb pizen t’ pure flesh.”
* * *
CHAPTER II
THE HORSES OF THE FINGER MARKS
At Last’s Holding a change had taken place. The sun of spring still shone as brightly, the work of the place went on as usual. The riders went at dawn and came at dusk, their herds lowing across the rolling green spaces, the days were as busy as they had ever been, but it seemed as if Last’s waited for something that would never happen, for some one who would never come. Conford, quiet, forceful, businesslike, carried on the work without a ripple. To a casual eye all things were as they had been. But to the keen eyes in the tanned faces of Last’s riders the change was appallingly apparent. They saw it creep day by day into their lives, felt it in the very atmosphere, and it was grim and promising.
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