Vingie E. Roe

“ For two hours they rode across the sunken range where the cottonwoods and aspens made a lovely and mottled shade, to reach at last the sharp ascent to the uplands above. When they topped the rim and started forward, the huge herds of Courtrey lay spread before them, bright as paint on the living green. Two thousand cattle grazed there in peace and plenty. Here and there a rider sat his horse in idleness. At the first sight of the solidly formed mass coming out of the Cup Rim on to the levels, these riders straightened in their saddles and rode in closer to their charges. ”

“ And not alone to Anita was she entirely lovely.
There was not a full grown man in Lost Valley who would not go many a mile to look upon her––with varying desires. Few voiced their longings, however, for Jim Last was notorious with his guns and could protect his daughter. He had protected her for twenty years, come full summer, and he asked no odds of any. His eyes were like Tharon’s––blue and changing, with odd little lines that crinkled about them at the corners, elongating them in appearance. He was a big man, vital and quiet. ”

“ What was Courtrey doing?
He rode straight up at last, like an Indian showing, and his bleeding left hand swung at his side. With the other he had swept off his wide 292 hat, so that his handsome iron-grey head was bare to the summer sun. His keen hawk face was lifted. He made a spectacular figure––like a warrior, unarmed, waiting his end with courage.
Unarmed!
That it was which struck Tharon like a hand across her face. ”

“ Far up at the Valley’s head against the huge uplift of the jumbled and barren rocklands the scattered squat buildings of the Stronghold brooded like a monster.
Spread out on the velvet slopes below lay the herds that belonged to it, sleek fat cattle, guarded carelessly by a few lazy and desultory riders. Courtrey was too secure in his insolent might to take those rigid and untiring precautions which 103 were the only price of safety to the lesser men of the community. ”

“ The riders stirred. Sympathy ached in their hearts, but not a man had speech to comfort her. It was Billy, the impulsive, who reached a hand to her shoulder and gripped it hard. Tharon reached up and touched the hand in gratitude.
It was about this time, when the master of Last’s Holding had lain a month beneath the staring mound under the pine tree out to the east where they had buried Harkness, that José finished a work of art. For many days he had laboured secretly in a calf-shed out behind the small corrals, and in his slim dark fingers there was beauty unleashed. ”

“ He tossed his handsome head and his eyes were bright as stars set in his silver face. Life was at high tide in him, flowing magnificently. Tharon, her cheeks whipped into pulsing colour by the wind and the 39 bounding speed, her tawny mane loosed from its bands and flying in a cloud behind her, smoothed back from her face, looked wild as an Indian. As she drew up and sat watching the work of the evening, she smiled for the first time in many days, and Jack Masters, passing, felt his heart leap with gladness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Last’s Holding had missed its master at each turn and point. A thousand times did Conford, the foreman, catch himself in the act of going to the big room to find him at his desk, a big, vital force, intent on the accounts of the ranch, a thousand times did he long for his keen insight. The vaqueros missed him and his open hand.
The very dogs at the steps missed him, and so did El Rey, waiting in his corral for the step that did not come, the strong hand on his bit. ”

“ This horse was no denizen of Lost Valley. It was an utter alien. Its colour was a dingy black, as if it had recently been through fire, its coat rough and unkempt. Its long head was heavy and 43 slug-like, its nose of the type known among horsemen as Roman. It was roughly built, raw-boned 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, a suggestion of great strength. ”

“ Out of its ideal loneliness there were but two known ways, and both were worth a man’s best effort. Down the river one might drive a band of cattle, bring in a loaded pack train, single file against the wall. That was a twelve days’ trip. Up through the defiles at the west a man on foot might make it out, provided he knew each inch of the Secret Way that scaled False Ridge.
It was spring, the time of greening ranges and the coming of new calves. Soft winds dipped and wantoned with Lost Valley, in the Cañon Country shy flowers, waxen, heavy-headed on thin stems, clung to the rugged walls. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was fast work, the fastest ever done on the Lost Valley ranges, and every nerve was strained like a singing wire.
Under the dust cloud raised by the plunging 107 hoofs, the whirling horses, the workers kept as close together as possible.
They rounded up the cut-outs, bunched them together compactly and swinging into a half circle, drove them rapidly back toward the oak-fringed edge of the Cup Rim. They passed close to where the slim boy stood by his horse, trying to wind the big red kerchief from his neck about his right arm from which the blood ran in a bright stream. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Tharon and Billy let the horses run. Golden was a racer himself, though he could not hold a candle to the silver king, and the two young creatures atop were free as the summer winds, as buoyant and filled with joy of being. So they shot down along the levels, Tharon holding El Rey up a bit, though it was a man-size job to do so, and Billy’s rein swinging loose on Golden’s neck. ”

“ The little burros, placid and faithful, went on and saw the pageant of the dawn from the hidden gateway in the Wall, crept down the Rockface, single file, and at their accustomed hour stood at their accustomed place before the Golden Cloud.
It was Wan Lee, Old Pete’s bête noir, who found them there and ran shouting through the crowd of belated players in the saloon’s big room, his pig-tail flying, his almond eyes popping, to upset a table and batter on his master’s door and scream that the “bullos” were here, “allesame lone,” and that there was blood all spattered on the hind one’s rump! ”

“ So she lay by the willows and hummed a sliding tune, a soft, sweet thing of minors and high notes falling, like rippling waters, and lazily watched the high white clouds sail by.
And as she lay she became conscious of something else in the drowsing land beside herself and her horse. She felt it first, this presence––a thin, dim vibration that sang in the earth beneath her. It stopped the wordless song on her lips, stilled the breath in her throat, set every nerve in her to listening, as it were.
Presently she sat up and felt quickly for the gun-butts in their scabbards. ”

“ Tharon’s blue eyes were narrow as her father’s, the little lines about them stood out. She rode low, like a limpet clinging, and her mind was on the two ahead––the man and the great bay horse.
As she felt the wind sing by her cheeks, sting the tears beneath her lids, she shut her lips tighter and hugged the pommel closer.
The green carpet went by beneath her like a 288 blur. The thunder of El Rey’s beating hoofs was like the sound of the cataracts when the cañons shot their freshets from the Rockface.
The note of his speed was rising––rising––rising. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Kenset took the hand. It was firm and shapely and vibrant with the young life there was in her. He laid his other one over it and held it in a close clasp for a moment.
“I mean only right,” he said, “sanity and law and decency. I think I have a big problem to handle here––aside from my work on the forest––a problem I must solve before I can be effective in that work––and I am more sincerely glad than I can say that my friend, the outlaw, took that warning shot at me. It ruined a perfectly good saddle, but it has made one point clear to you. I am no Courtrey man, and that’s a solemn fact.” ”

“ He was rich, powerful, bullying, a man whose self-aggrandizement knew no limit, whose merest whim was his law, whose will must not be thwarted. Year by year his vaqueros drove down the Wall herds of fat cattle, their brands blurred, insolently raw and careless. Many a hapless man had stood and seen his own stock go by in Courtrey’s band and dared not open his mouth. ”

“ They shot through them, up along the sharply lifting skirts of the hills, in between the guarding pines that formed the gateway to the little glade where the singing stream went 225 down and the cabin stood at the head. Tharon’s throat was tight, as if a hand pressed hard upon it. The high tops of the pines seemed to cut the sky grotesquely. There was no light at the dim log house, no sound in the silent glade. Off to the right they heard the low of the little red cow which served the forest man with milk. ”

“ He felt a stir within him of savagery, of excitement.
He meant to have justice done, to put a hard hand on the law of Lost Valley. Murders uninvestigated, cattle stolen at will, settlers’ homes burned over their heads, their hearths blown up by planted powder when they returned from any small trip, their horses run off––these things had seemed to him preposterous, mere shadows of facts. Now they were down to straight points before him, tangible, solid. He got them from the blue eyes of Tharon Last, the gun woman, and he had taken sides! ”

“ Tharon Last looked at her with wide eyes. She had forgotten all about this woman in the passionate hatred of Courtrey and the desire to pin his crimes upon him. Now she wet her lips and looked at Ellen long and silently. The pale lips were quivering, the long arm shook as it held the gun.
“God!” whispered the girl, watching, “she loves him! Like I loved Jim Last! Th’ pain’s in her heart, an’ no mistake!”
Then, as if something strong within her folded its iron arm upon itself, she began to back El Rey. “Back out!” she called, “we ain’t no woman-killers!” ”

“ Now he held a gun woman’s hand in the thin shade of a willow clump in the heart of Lost Valley––and the blood surged in his ears, the levels and slopes danced before his vision.
“Miss Tharon,” he said, for the first time using her given name, “I beg your pardon. You are strong, simple, serene. You know your land and its ways. I am an alien, an interloper––but I can’t bear to think of you as waiting for the time to kill a man––or to be killed in the killing. It sickens me.”
Tharon snatched her hand from his and leaped to her feet. ”

“ Night was coming fast across Lost Valley, while the tree-toads out by the springhouse set up their nightly chorus.
“It’s Eden,” thought the man, “as sure’s th’ world, made an’ forgot with all its trimmin’s––innocence an’ sweetness an’ plenty, an’ th’ silence of perfect peace, not to overlook th’ last unnecessary evil, th’ livin’ presence of his majesty, th’ devil.”
Then the light died wholly and there came the disturbing sound of boots on the ringing stones. The rest of the riders were coming in to claim their share of Billy’s Eden. ”

“ At its end Kenset’s eyes were deep and troubled, but Tharon’s were beginning to glow with the old fire that all the Holding knew, the leaping flame that rose and died and rose again, exciting to the beholder, promising, threatening, unfathomable.
“Why, it’s a cinch!” said O’Hallan, “a dead moral cinch! Don’t see how it’s held on like it has. Couldn’t have in any other place in the good old 281 U. S. A. but this God forsaken hole! Well named, Lost Valley! Why, we’ve found enough evidence already to convict a dozen men! ”