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They passed each other with hostile eyes and trigger fingers were unusually limber. The air was pregnant with change. Buck Courtrey was conspicuous by his absence. He was not seen in the town, neither was he at the Stronghold. There were soft whispers afloat that he was with the Pomos up under the Rockface at the north.
Never before had a crowd in Lost Valley gone out from a courtroom in that strange and bodeful silence. The sight of Ellen lying white and limp across Cleve Whitmore's shoulder like a sack of grain, as he passed out with the moving mass, had an odd effect. It was partly the white dress that did it and the time was ripe. Courtrey and his gang were toward the fore first out.
But other things were crowding forward he was leaning forward telling that circle of grim, lean faces, that if they could not handle this thing themselves, there were those in the big world of below who could that there were men of the Secret Service who could find that gun no matter where Courtrey or Ellen hid it, that Lost Valley, no matter what its isolation or its history, was yet in the U. S. A., and could be tamed.
"Your little old sheriff has had the fear-of-the-Lord put into him somewhat. He's shaking in his boots about the snow-packer. There's only one thing lacking to make our grip close down on Courtrey, and that's vital the gun with the untrue firing pin you speak about in your instructions." "Not lackin'," said Tharon grimly, "we've got it, Mister." The Secret Service man whirled to her.
Her brother Cleve, saddling up a little way apart, cast a long studying glance at Wylackie and Arizona. He jerked the cinch so savagely that the horse leaped and struck. For four days there was absolute dearth at the Stronghold. Courtrey did not return. Ellen timidly tried to find out from the vaqueros where he had gone, but they evaded her.
But of all those whom it affected there was none to whom it meant what it did to Courtrey himself. In him it set loose something which burned in him like a consuming fire. Where he had thought of Tharon Last before with a certain intent, now he thought of her in a sort of madness. He was a king himself, in a manner, an eagle, a prowler of great spaces, a rule-or-ruin force.
And yet she waited on his word, somehow held her hand from her sworn duty for a while, waiting for what? Ah, she knew! Deep in the soul of her she knew, vaguely and dimly to be sure, but she knew that it was for the time when the die should be cast that he might prove himself for what he was. For some vague reason she knew she would not kill Courtrey until this man stood by.
For the second time Courtrey had missed a life because a brave heart dared him. Old Pete had paid the price for that trick. Dixon had no thought of it. And in one moment the chance was past, for a sound began to roar from that silent crowd which had poured from the courtroom the deep, bloodcurdling sound of the mob forming, inarticulate, uncertain.
Ellen, swaying on her feet, looked all around with her big pale eyes, and when she saw Courtrey some distance away she put a hand to her heart as simply as a hurt child. She was a pitiful creature in her long white dress, for she had ridden in on an old sidesaddle, and she shook out the crumpled folds in a wistful attempt to look proper.
Courtrey was resenting the vague something in the air that was crystallizing into resistance about him. Word of the stealing ran about the Valley like a grass fire, more boldly than usual. It came to Last's in eighteen hours, brought by a horseman who had carried it to many a lonely homestead. Tharon received it with a thrill of joy. "Good enough," she said, "no use wasting time."
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