“Lola says you love this dude from below. That don’t cut no ice with me. I ain’t carin’ for no love from you at present. All I want is you. I can make you love me once I’ve got you safe at th’ Stronghold. I ain’t never failed with no woman yet. An’ I mean to have you, fair means or foul.
“Rather have you fair. So here’s my last word.
“This Kenset ain’t dead––yet. I went and took him. I’ve got him safe as hell in the Cañon Country. Ain’t no man in th’ Valley can find God’s Cup but me. He’s guarded an’ there’s a lookout on th’ peak above th’ Cup that can see a signal fire at th’ Stronghold. One fire out by my big corral means ‘Send him out by False Ridge with ten days’ grub.’ Two fires means ‘Put a true bullet in his head an’ leave him there.’ Now, here’s the word. I’ve got a case fixed up to divorce Ellen, legal. If you’ll marry me soon’s I’m free, I’ll build one fire out by that corral.
“If you say yes, you build one fire out by th’ cottonwoods to th’ left of the Holdin’. I’m watchin’ an’ will see it at once. You can see for yourself I mean bisness, as if you’ll watch too, you’ll see that one fire here.
Courtrey.”
For a long moment the Mistress of Last’s stood in profound quiet, as if she could not move. She was held in a trance like those dreadful night-dreams when one is locked in deadly inertia, helpless. The net which had been weaving in Courtrey’s fertile brain was finished, flung, and closing in upon her before she knew of its existence. An awe of his cleverness, his trickery, gripped her in a clutch of ice. The whole fabric of her own desires and plans and purposes seemed to crumple like the white ash in a dead fire, leaving her nothing. She had been out-witted instead of outfought. One more evidence of the man’s baseness, his unscrupulous cunning.
He played his trump card and it was a winner, sweeping the table––for she knew before she finished that difficult reading that she would do anything in all the world to stop that “true bullet” in the heart that had pounded beneath her open palms.... Knew she would break her given word to Jim Last––knew she would forsake the Holding––that she would crawl to Courtrey’s feet and kiss his hand, if only he would spare Kenset of the foothills, would send him out to that vague world of below, never to return!
She swayed drunkenly on her feet for a time that seemed ages long. Then life came back in her with a rush. She broke the nightmare dream and gasped out a broken command to her faithful ones.
“Billy!” she said thickly, “Oh, Billy! If you love me, run! Run an’ build a fire––one fire!––only one fire, Billy, dear––out by th’ cottonwoods to th’ left––of th’ Holdin’!”
Then she went and sat limply down on the step at the western door, leaned her head against the deep adobe wall, and fell to weeping as if the very heart in her would wash itself away in tears.
And Billy, numb with anguish but true to the love he bore her, went swiftly out and set that beacon glowing. Its red light flaring against the blue darkness of the falling night seemed like a bodeful omen of sorrow and disaster, of death and failure and despair.
Tharon on the sill roused herself to watch it leap and glow, then turned her deep eyes to where she knew the Stronghold lay.
Presently out upon the distant black curtain of the night there flared that other fire, signal of life to Kenset somewhere in the Cañon Country––and then her lips drew into a thin hard line and she straightened her young form stiffly up, put a hand hard upon her breast.
“A little time, Courtrey!” she whispered to herself, “Jus’ a little time an’ luck, an’ I’ll give you th’ double-cross or die, damn your soul to hell!”
Billy, coming softly in along the adobe wall, caught the whisper, felt rather than heard its meaning, and turned back with the step of a cat.
* * *
An hour later, when all the Holding was quiet for the night, drifting to early rest after the day’s hard work, the Mistress of Last’s, booted, dressed in riding clothes, her fair head covered by a sombrero, her daddy’s guns at her hips, crept softly to the gate of El Rey’s own corral. She went like a thief, crouching, watching, without a sound, and saddled the big stallion in careful softness. She led him gently out and around toward the cottonwoods, away from the house. When she was well away she put foot to stirrup and went up as the king leaped for his accustomed flight.
But Tharon pulled him down. She wanted no thunder on the sounding-board tonight. But soft as she had been, as careful, there was one at the Holding who followed her every act, who went for a horse, too, who saddled Drumfire in silence and who crept down the sounding-board––Billy the faithful. Far down along the plain toward the Black Coulee he let the red roan out, so that the girl, keen of hearing as of sight, caught the following beat of hoofs, stopped, listened, understood and reined El Rey up to wait.
And soon out of the shadows cast by the eastern ramparts, where the moon was rising, she saw the rider coming. A quick mist of tears suffused her eyes, a sick feeling gripped her heart.
Here was another mixed in the sorry tangle! She had always known vaguely that Billy was one with her, that his heart was the deep heart of her friend.
He was the one she always wanted near her in times of stress, it was with him she liked to ride in the Big Shadow when the sun went down behind the Cañon Country.
But now she did not want him. She had a keen desire to see him safely out of this––this which was to be the end, one way or the other, of the blood-feud between the Stronghold and Last’s.
Now as he loped up and stopped abreast of her in silence, she reached out a hand and caught his in a close clasp.
“I don’t want you, Billy, dear,” she said miserably, “not because I don’t love you, but because I ain’t a-goin’ to see you shot by Courtrey’s gang. This is one time, boy, when I want you to leave me alone, to go back without me.”
The rider shook his head against the stars.
“Couldn’t do it, little girl,” he said wistfully, “you know I couldn’t do it.”
“Ain’t I your mistress, Billy?” asked Tharon sternly. “Ain’t I your boss?”
“Sure are,” said the boy with conviction.
“Ain’t I always been a good boss to you?”
“Best in th’ world. Good as Jim Last.”
“Then,” said Tharon sharply, “it’s up to you to take my orders. I order you now––go back.”
The cowboy leaned down suddenly and kissed the hand he held.
“I’m at your shoulder, Tharon, dear,” he said with simple dignity, “like your shadow. At your foot like the dogs that never forsake th’ herds. I couldn’t go back an’ leave you––not though I died for it tonight.
“We’ll say no more about it. I don’t know where you’re goin’, but wherever it is, there I’m goin’, too, an’ on my way. You can tell me or not, just as you please, but let’s go.”
For a long time Tharon Last sat in the starlight and watched the crests of the distant mountains fringed with the silver of the moon that was rising behind them, and her throat ached with tears. All these things that hurt her, these unknown, tangled things that she knew dimly meant Life, had come to her with the advent of Kenset in Lost Valley. She wished passionately for a fleeting moment that he had never come, that the old swinging, rushing life of the ranges had never known his holding influence. Then she felt again the hammering of his heart beneath her palms, and nothing mattered in all the world beside.
It was a thing beyond her ken, something ordered by fate. She must go on, blindly as running waters, regardless of all that drowned.
But she loosed her hand from Billy’s, leaned to his shoulder, put her arm about his neck and drew his face to hers. Softly, tenderly, she kissed him upon the lips, and she did not know that that was the cruelest thing she had ever done in all her kindly life, did not see the deathly pallor that overspread his face.
“I’m goin’ to th’ Cañon Country, Billy,” she said simply, “to find th’ Cup o’ God an’ Ken
set.”
Then she straightened in her saddle and gave El Rey the rein.
* * *
It was two of the clock by the starry heavens when these two riders entered the blind opening in the Rockface and disappeared. El Rey, the mighty, tossed his great head and whistled, stamped his hoofs in the dead sift of the silencing floor. He had never before lost sight of the sky, never felt other breath in his nostrils than the keen plain’s wind.
Now he shook himself and halted, went on again, and again halted, to be urged forward by Tharon’s spurred heels in his flanks. Up through the eerie pass they went without speech, for each heart was filled to overflowing with thoughts and fears.
To Billy there was something fateful, bodeful in the dead darkness, the stillness. It seemed to him as if he left forever behind him the open life of the ranges, the gay and careless days of riding after Tharon’s cattle.
For five years he had lived at Last’s, under master and mistress, content, happy. The half-remembered world of below had never called him. The light on the table under the swinging lamp with Tharon’s face therein, the murmur of the stream through her garden, the whisper of the cottonwoods, these had been sufficient. He had, subconsciously, thanked his Maker for these things, had served them with a whole heart. They had been his all, his life. Now the cottonwoods seemed far away, remote, the life of the deep ranch house a thing of long ago. All these things had given way to something that sapped the sunlight from the air, the very blueness from the vaulted skies, something that had come with the quiet man of the pine-tree badge. So Billy sighed in the darkness and sat easily on Drumfire, his slim left hand fidgeting with the swinging rein.
And Tharon was lost, too, in a maze of thoughts. She sat straight as a lance, tense, alive, keen, staring into the narrow bore of the high ceiled cut, thinking feverishly. Was Kenset really alive? Had Courtrey been square with her? Or was he even now lying stiff and stark somewhere in the high cuts, his dark eyes dull with death, that beating heart forever stilled? She caught her breath with a whistling sigh, felt her head swim at the picture. If he was––if––he––was––! She fingered the big guns at her hip and savagery took hold of her. Courtrey’s left wrist to match his right. Then some pretty work about him to make him wait––then a shot through his stomach––he would spit blood and reel, but he wouldn’t die––the butcher!––for a little while, and she would taunt him with Harkness––and Jim. Last shot in the back––with Old Pete––and with––with Kenset––the one man––Oh, the one man in all the world whose quiet smile was unforgettable, whose vital hands were upon hers now, like ghost-hands, would always be upon hers if she lived to be old like Anita or died at dawn today! And Kenset had counseled her to peace! To keep the stain of blood from her own hands! She laughed aloud, suddenly, a ghastly sound that made cold chills go down her rider’s spine, for it was the mad laughter of the blood-lust! Billy knew that Jim Last in his best moments was never so coldly a killer as his daughter was tonight.
So they traversed the roofed cut and came out into the starlight of the first cañon. Up this they went in single file. They passed the place where Albright had found the dark spray on the cañon wall, the standing rock where the gun with the untrue firing pin had kicked away its shell. A little farther on was the disturbed and trampled heap of slide which had held Old Pete’s body. In silence they rode on, the horses’ hoofs striking a million echoes from the reverberating crosscuts.
The moon was shining above, but here there was only a sifted light, a ghostly radiance of starlight and painted walls. Tharon, riding ahead, went unerringly forward as if she traveled the open ways of the Valley floor. She turned from the main cañon toward the left and passed the mouth of Old Pete’s snow-bed. Between this and that standing spire and pinnacle she went, with a strong certainty that presently stirred Billy to speech.
“Tharon, dear,” he said gently, “hadn’t we better leave a mark or two along this-a-way? Ain’t you got no landmarks?”
“Can if you want,” the girl said briefly, “I don’t need landmarks.”
“Then how you know the way? There ain’t no one knows th’ Cañon Country––but Courtrey.”
“I don’t know it,” she said simply but with profound conviction. “I’m feelin’ it, Billy. I know I’m goin’ straight to th’ Cup o’ God. I’m blind as a bat, it seems, yet goin’ straight.”
She lifted a hand and crossed herself.
“Goin’ straight––Mary willin’––an’ I’ll come back straight. It lies up there an’ to th’ left again.” She made a wide gesture that swept up and out, embracing the towering walls, the half-seen peaks against the stars.
Billy shut his lips and said no more.
Up there lay False Ridge, the sinister, dropping spine that came down from the uplands outside where the real great world began, and lured those who traveled down it to crumbling precipice and yawning pit, to sliding slope and slant that, once ridden down, could never be scaled again, according to the weird stories that were told of it.
But if Tharon went to the Cañons, there lay his trail, too. If she went down False Ridge to death in the pits and waterless cuts, he asked no better lot than to follow––the faithful dog at her foot, the shadow at her shoulder.
And so it was that dawn crept up the blue-velvet of the night sky and sent its steel-blue light deep in the painted splits, and they rode unerringly forward up the sounding passes.
When the light increased enough to show the way they came abruptly to the spot where it was necessary to leave the horses. The floor of the cañon up which they were traveling lifted sharply in one huge step, breast-high to a man.
Tharon in the lead halted and looked for a moment all up and down the wondrous maze of pale, tall openings that encompassed them all round.
She turned in her saddle and looked back the way they had come. There was darker shadow, going downward, but here and there those pale mouths gaped, long ribbons of space dropping from the heights above down to their level.
Up any one a man might turn and lose himself completely, for they in turn were cut and ribboned with other mouths, leaving spires and walls and faces a thousand-fold on every hand.
Tharon, even in the tensity and preoccupation of the hour, drew in her breath and the pupils of her blue eyes spread.
“Th’ Cañon Country!” she said softly, “I always knew it would be like this––too great to tell about! I knew it would hold somethin’ for me––always knew it––either life an’ its best––or death.”
There was a simple grandeur about the earnest words, and Billy, his face grey in the steely light, felt the heart in his breast thrill with their portent.
No matter what the Cañons held for her––either that glorious fulfillment of life, or the simple austerity of death––he would have a part in it, would have served her to the last, true to the love he bore her, true to himself.
And nothing––nothing under God’s heaven, save death itself––could ever wipe out the memory of that kiss, given from the depths of her loving heart, the sign-manuel of her undying affection and friendship, the one and only touch of her inviolate red lips that he had ever known the Mistress of Last’s to give to any man, save Jim Last himself.
He wiped a hand across his forehead, damp with more than the night cold, and dismounted.
“We’ll leave th’ horses here,” he said. “I’ve an extra rope to string across an’ make a small corral.”
He did not add that he would fasten this slim barrier lightly, so that a horse that really wanted to break out––in the frantic madness of thirst, say,––might do so.
Then he set about his task––but Tharon stood with strained eyes looking up––and up––and ever up to the dimly appearing, looming spine of False Ridge.
Over there, she knew in her heart, lay the hidden Cup o’ God, with its secret, the secret that meant all the world to her.
* * *
CHAPTER X
THE UNTRUE FIRING PI
N
Tharon turned back and looked long at El Rey. She wondered if she would ever see the great silver-blue stallion again, ever feel the wind singing by her cheeks, ever hear the thunder of his running on the hollow ranges. She saw the stain of Jim Last’s blood on the big studded saddle and a pain like death stabbed her.
“I’ll get him,” she had promised on that tragic day, “so help me God!” and had made the sign of the Cross.
What did she now?
Cast away all certainty of that fulfilment because a man––a man almost a stranger––lay somewhere in the Cañon Country, crawled somewhere along False Ridge, perhaps, wounded and sick with fever.
“Oh, hurry!” she whispered as Billy made secure his last light knot in the rope gateway across the cut and came to join her.
She scrambled up the bench in the cañon floor, gained her feet and went forward at a rush.
“Steady, Tharon,” warned the rider, “you ain’t used to climbin’. Save your wind.”
It was true advice. Long before the sun was high overhead and day was broad in the painted cracks she had begun to heed it. As she swung up the ever lifting floors, threaded this way and that between the thin intercepting walls that towered hundreds of feet straight up, she cast her wide eyes up in wonder. Always she had watched the Cañon Country from her western door, always it had held her with a binding lure.
There was that about its mystery, its austere majesty, that had thrilled her heart from babyhood. She had pictured it a thousand times and always it had looked just so––pink and grey and saffron, pale and misty with light when the sun was high, blue and wonderful and black as the luminary lowered, leaving the quick shadows.
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