He laid his hat on the earth beside him and smoothed the sleek, dark hair back from his forehead.
Ellen sat still and watched him with a steady gaze.
She was finding him strange. She looked at his olive drab garments, at the trim leather leggings that encased his lower limbs, at his smooth hands, at his face, and lastly at the dark shield on his breast.
“Law?” she asked succinctly.
“Well,” smiled Kenset, “after a fashion.”
She moved uneasily in her chair, and the man had a sudden feeling of pity for her.
“Not as you mean, Mrs. Courtrey,” he hastened. “I am in the United States Forest Service, if you know what that is.”
“No,” said Ellen, “I don’t know.”
“It is simply a service for the conservation of the timber of this country,” he explained gently, but he saw that he was not making it clear.
“The saving of the trees,” he went on, “the care of the forests.”
“Oh,” she said, relieved.
“We look after the ranges, protect the woods from fire, and so on.”
“Look after th’ ranges? How?”
“Regulate grazing, grant permits.”
“Permits?”
“Yes.” And seeing that at last he had caught her interest, Kenset talked quietly for an hour and told her more than he had vouchsafed any other in Lost Valley about his work.
Gradually, however, he fell to talking to amuse her, for he saw the emptiness behind the big blue eyes, the aching void which there was nothing to fill, neither love nor hope.
As the sun sank lower toward the west Ellen took off the atrocity of calico and starch, and he saw with wonder the amazing beauty of her ropes of hair.
When he ceased talking the silence became profound, for she had nothing to say and speech did not come easy to her anyway. He did not know that at the windows and behind the door-jambs of the deep old house were clustered almost a dozen dusky women and children, drawn from all over the place and listening in utter silence.
Unconsciously he had drifted back to his life in the outside world, encouraged by the absorbing interest of the pale eyes that never left his face. He told Ellen of boat races on the Hudson, of theatres on Broadway, of college pranks and frolics, ranged over half the continent in little story and snatch of description.
Neither one noticed how the shadows were lengthening, nor that the sun had dropped in majesty behind the mighty Wall.
It took the sound of running horses, many of them coming up along the slopes, to bring Kenset back to the present with a snap, to make the woman reach swiftly for the bonnet and clap it on her head.
“Mrs. Courtrey,” said Kenset hurriedly, “this has been the first real talk I have had with any of my neighbours, and I want to thank you for it.”
“Oh,” quavered the woman, “I don’t know as I’d ought to a-let you stayed! Mebby I’d oughtn’t. But––but seems like you bein’ so different, an’ I not seein’ no one, come day in day out, w’y I––I––”
“Sure,” he returned quickly, understanding. “You did just right. I wanted to stay.”
Then he rose to his feet and there came the thunder of the horses, the noise of men stopping from a run, dismounting.
Ellen rose and he followed her around the corner of the house to the door yard.
As they waited, Courtrey, clad in dark leather chaps, his guns swinging, came toward them. At sight of Kenset he stopped short and an oath rolled from his lips. The kerchief at his neck was turned knot-back and hung like a glob of crimson blood upon his breast.
Under his hat, set at an angle, his dark hair fluffed strangely.
He was a splendid figure of a man, broad shouldered, slim hipped.
Now he looked hard at the stranger and a slow grin lifted his upper lip.
“What’s this?” he said, and there was a light suspicion of thickness in his voice, “my wife got com-ny?”
Kenset heard the woman catch her breath, and the feeling of pity that had taken him at first for her intensified.
“No, Mr. Courtrey,” he said advancing, “but you have,” and he held out his hand. “I’m Kenset, from the foothills.”
Courtrey, not four feet from him, did not look at the hand. Instead the glittering eyes under the hat-brim looked steadily into his with an expression that only one man in a hundred could have interpreted.
That one man, however, stood by the watering trough, his hand on the neck of a drinking horse––Cleve Whitmore who watched Courtrey without blinking.
For a moment Kenset stood so, his hand extended, waiting. Then the colour rose in his face and he drew back the hand, raised it, scrutinized it smilingly, and put it quietly on his hip.
Still smiling he raised his eyes again to Courtrey’s face.
“Courtrey,” he said, this time without the Mr., “I’ve come to Lost Valley to stay. I had hoped to be friends with all my neighbours. It would have made my work easier. However, with or without, I stay.”
And he picked up his hat, set it on his head, walked over to the brown horse, flung up the rein, mounted and rode out of the Stronghold in utter silence.
His face was flaming, the blood of outraged dignity and deep anger beat in his temples like a drum. As he rode farther away he heard the embarrassing silence broken by the hoarse shouts of laughter of half drunken men.
“Go to it,” he said aloud, clinching his fists on his saddle horn, “this is part of my duty. The Big Chief was right when he said, ‘If you help the Service to tame Lost Valley you’ve got your work cut out.’ It’s a man-size job. I mustn’t doubt my ability.”
* * *
CHAPTER VI
EL REY AND BOLT
Tharon Last and all her followers held themselves in readiness for anything in the days that followed the taking of the herds from Courtrey’s range.
They locked their doors at night, stood double guard at corral and stable. Mothers scattered throughout Lost Valley gathered in their little ones and watched the slopes and levels when their men were out.
But a strange quietness seemed to settle down upon them. That for which they waited did not materialize. Courtrey and his gun men rode into Corvan and up and down the Valley on mysterious missions which were as unsettling as open depredations, but nothing happened. In fact, Courtrey, burning with the new desire that was beginning to obsess him, was working out a new design.
He began to draw away from Lola. His triweekly visits to the Golden Cloud dropped off a bit. He took to drifting about from saloon to saloon, to being less pronounced in his frequenting of one or two places.
His cold eyes, however, set in their narrow slits beneath the heavy brows, picked out every settler that he met and promised vague things for the future. He knew to a man who had ridden up from Last’s that day, and he meant that not one should escape full payment––some time. Now he thought of the girl who had defied him and he waited with leaping pulse. The memory of that kiss, taken by violence at her western door, was with him night and day. She stood for right and the dignity of order. He meant, for a time, to play her hand.
Therefore the settlers waited, and held their breath while they did so.
And Courtrey took to riding much more alone, to watching the slopes and stretches with a hand at his hat-brim, shading his keen eyes. He looked far and wide in the golden summer land for the sight of a silver horse cutting down the wind with a slim girl in saddle.
But Tharon was busy at the Holding and El Rey stamped and whistled in his paddock. The mistress knew that she had set stern tides flowing in the Valley, that sooner or later they were due to sweep away the peace and quiet that pervaded the cottonwoods and the singing springs. She knew that Courtrey waited, but she made the most of that waiting.
Conford and Billy and the rest of the riders made strong bolts for all the doors of the house, reinforced the fences that held the herds at night, put trick locks on all the gates.
But the time came when the close re
treat became irksome to the girl, and she went from room to room in an uneasiness that was foreign to her calm and happy nature. She read over and over the two or three old books that had been at the Holding since she could remember, made new covers for the tables in the living room, kept the hands of the Virgin full of fresh offerings. But these things staled.
She began to long for the distances, the open spaces, the feel of the swooping stallion under her sailing down the wind. Courtrey or no Courtrey, she could not fight it down. So, on a golden day when all the boys were out with the herds and only the Indian vaqueros left in charge by Conford were at the stables, she flung the big saddle with its silver studs and its sombre stain on El Rey, mounted and went out and away like the wind itself. Not since the day of the raid on Courtrey’s stolen herds had she been on El Rey’s back and the first long leap and drop of the great horse beneath her set the lights to sparkling in her eyes, the blood to burning in her golden cheeks. She lay low on his neck and let him run, and her heart leaped up with lightness as it ever did when she rode in these thundering bursts.
IN FACT COURTREY, BURNING WITH THE NEW DESIRE THAT WAS BEGINNING TO OBSESS HIM, WAS WORKING OUT A NEW DESIGN
There was no other horse in Lost Valley like the great king! Neither Redbuck nor Golden nor Drumfire! Neither Sweetheart nor Westwind! No, nor any Ironwood Bay that came down from Courtrey’s Stronghold, Bolt and Arrow not excepted.
Tharon laughed and stroked the king’s neck, thewed like steel beneath her hands. She had no fear of Courtrey and his hired killers. Sooner or later the issue would come, of course. Then she would kill the man as she had promised Jim Last, without a thought.
Nay, she thought of Ellen, fragile white flower, of whom she had heard.
A softening came about her young mouth at thought of her, a shadow flickered in her blue eyes for a moment. Then it was gone and she laughed, a whooping gale of joy, there alone in the green stretches between the earth and sky, with the note of El Rey’s speed steadily rising in her ears.
It beat in her very heart, that singing note. She loved the king as she loved nothing else on earth, save only the memory of her father.
She went south toward the Black Coulee and she thanked her stars that her riders were grazing the herds north toward the Cup Rim. Here there was none to say her nay, to urge her with loving solicitude to go back.
The miles sped backward and she scarce noted their travel. She drew the king down a bit, slowed him from the swooping run, set him into the wonderful rock-and-away of the singlefoot and retied the ribbon on her hair. She wore no hat this day and the tawny cloud of her hair fluffed back from her forehead, straining at its bands, its loose ends standing up like fairy stuff all over her head. So, with her two arms held high above her and the reins in her teeth, she rode down by the mouth of Black Coulee––and up from the depths of the rugged wash that split the plain for seven miles there came across her path a man on a great bay horse.
Courtrey on Bolt! She knew the beautiful animal even so far away. It did not need the challenging toss of El Rey’s head, the piercing scream that rang from his open mouth across the silence, nor the sudden lunge and strain against the bit.
That was Bolt, the mighty, and no mistake. None but Arrow carried his splendid head so regally, none other bore so huge a cloud of mane on his arching neck, so long a tail that spread like a fan between his knees and almost swept the ground.
So, Courtrey came out of the Coulee to meet her! He would, maybe, force the issue. But Tharon was not ready for that. What was plain killing? No, she wanted more than that. She wanted to see him scourged and beaten, humiliated and robbed as he had robbed Lost Valley.
So she turned El Rey, though it took the whole strength of her young arms, and headed him back the way they had come. With the first turn and straightening leap her heart thumped hard against her ribs.
There, between her and the Holding, far distant, there were two riders––and they rode bay horses, both!
She made no doubt that they were Wylackie Bob and Black Bart, on Arrow and Slingshot.
A sudden mist of fear came across her eyes. A tightening caught her throat. She looked around the illimitable spaces that stretched away on all sides. There was nothing in all the spreading plains but the three riders, sprung from nowhere, it seemed, and herself.
Courtrey came rapidly up toward her, swinging a bit to the west. The others, set somewhat apart to right and left, bore down upon her. It looked very much as if they meant to ride her down to the Black Coulee.
Once in its sheltering deep wash she would be helpless, cut off from escape. The Black Coulee went back into the eastern hills, lost itself up in the rugged and torturous clefts and chasms that cut the unknown ramparts, dark with forest and mysterious.
No! Not the Black Coulee and Courtrey to take her prisoner!
She looked this way and that. Then she saw that toward her right she had some margin. There was space there to swing away from the man in front who came like the wind itself toward her. She caught the seeming of great speed and her heart leaped again.
She recalled the day she had asked Jack Masters if Bolt could run like El Rey.
“How do I know?” he had answered. “I know it was speed, an’ that is all.” True enough. It was Bolt, coming like his namesake, down along the sloping stretches.
But a great wave of exultation swept over her. She rose in her stirrups, shook an insulting hand above her, dropped on El Rey’s neck, swerved him east and swept away toward the lifting skirts of the wooded hills. She heard a yell behind her, glanced back and saw that the three Ironwoods were sweeping behind her, closing in together. It was to be a race at last!
At last the whispered comparisons that had stirred under the speech of the Valley concerning the Ironwoods and the Finger Marks was to have justification. For the first and only time, in her knowledge, they were to run.
“All right!” cried Tharon aloud. “Come on, you bastards! It’s the king you come against an’ Jim Last’s blood! You’ll never put a hand on either.”
She struck her heels into El Rey’s flanks, leaned over her pommel, wished she was on the king’s bare back, reached her hands far out along the reins and began to call in his ear.
“Yeeoo! Yeeoo! Yeeoo!” she cried, a high, exciting note that keened in the singing wind. And El Rey, ever keen to run for no reason, finding himself called upon, stretched out his great body, dropped low to earth and began to run. The wind cut by Tharon’s face like a knife in the first few leaps.
It shut her eyes in a dozen. She rode and laughed with a half sob in her throat. The thunder of the king’s iron-shod hoofs was in her ears like the roar of the spring freshets when the empty cañons poured their temporary torrents down the Rockface into the Valley.
She knew he was running as she had never ridden before. She had never called upon him before. It was like being adrift upon the wind. She heard the note of his speed rising in her ears. It was as it had ever been, save that it was a higher note, thinner, sharper. There was scarce a sense of touch beneath her, a lack of jar, of vibration, so evenly and smoothly did the shining hoofs take the grassy plain.
Tears were in her eyes. Laughter was on her lips. This was speed indeed! She had a sick longing that Jim Last might see his two loved ones go!
Then she gathered herself to turn her head across her leaning shoulder and look back.
As her eyes swept into focus behind, the laughter slipped off her lips as if wiped by an invisible hand.
There, the same distance away as when they started, rode Courtrey!
No farther away!
Bolt, shining in the sun, was keeping pace with El Rey!
Farther back––a little farther back––was Arrow, running magnificently, too.
A greater distance behind the two came Slingshot.
Tharon was frightened. Not for herself. Not for the intent of the men who came after her. Not for gun-fire, nor for capture.
She was afraid for the king! Afrai
d that Bolt could hold that wonderful pace! Then a surging rage rose and sickened her.
She leaned down again and called once more into the stallion’s ear and once more the note rose a notch. She felt that great pulsing seeming of reserve. Always when she called there was the answer. The plain swam beneath her like a blur. The thunder of the king’s hoofs was a single note also.
Then Tharon raised her eyes and saw that she had left the open land behind. The mountains were rising swiftly before, she was sweeping up their skirts. Trees flew by. She heard the singing of waters. The forests seemed to come down out of the skies to meet her, dark, forbidding.
She felt a sense of disaster, of helplessness. Where was she going, she and El Rey, with her enemies behind and coming fast? What was to be the end of the race? And then, all suddenly, the woods seemed to fall away on either side, a gateway to open up before her. A lovely open glade spread into the heart of the forest and the great king thundered in between the guarding pines. Like a silver flame he shot up the sloping floor, slowed, changed and came to stop before a cabin that sat securely at the glade’s head.
With the crashing pound of El Rey’s ploughing hoofs upon the very stones at the step, a man came quickly from the interior of the cabin and stepped out, his hand lifted.
Tharon Last, her hair beating on her shoulders, her face pale as ashes, her breast heaving, looked back toward the opening in the trees, and saw Courtrey swing in a wide arc and circle past to disappear toward the north.
After him swept his two lieutenants, to fade swiftly from sight behind the shielding forest.
A grim expression spread over the face of the man at the step as he, too, beheld the end of the vital play.
Then he looked up at the girl on the silver stallion and his dark eyes were alight.
“What’s this?” he asked abruptly.
Then Tharon seemed to become conscious of him for the first time.
She looked down at him and the black pupils were spread across the azure of her eyes, making them strangely exciting in their straight glance.
Tharon of Lost Valley Page 9