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Courtrey sent word to Tharon an illy spelled letter, mailed at Baston's that he had meant nothing by that race above the Black Coulee, except another kiss. There was Courtrey's daring in the affronting words. She sent the letter back to him riding in on El Key alone with the outline of a gun traced across it. "Th' little wildcat!" grinned the man, "she's sure spunky!"
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.
She heard it tell of that far away day of her marriage of the years that followed of Courtrey's love for her of her own gentleness, her beauty, "like the tender sunlight of spring on the snow and the golden sands" of her service, her loyalty, her love that had "never faltered nor intruded" that "patient obedience to her master had but strengthened and made perfect."
Cattle stole every spring, waterholes taken an' fenced fer Courtrey's stock right on th' open range, hogs drove off, fences tore down, like pore old John Dement's an' some of us left t' rot every year in some coulee. We done waited a sight too long.
In fact, Kenset had thought he knew horses, but he stood in open-mouthed wonder before the horses of Lost Valley the magnificent Ironwood bays of Courtrey's, with their wonderful long manes and tails that shone like a lady's hair, the Finger Marks which he had seen once or twice, and marvelled at. With the opening of the boxes the cabin in the glade took on a look of home, of individuality.
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.
Like Bolt, Courtrey's body turned a complete somersault and lay still, at sudden peace. Tharon Last and El Rey went on like an arrow they could not stop. When at last she did draw the great king down she was far and away from the spot. She turned her head, panting and dizzy, and looked back.... She could see the prone red heap that was Bolt a little way beyond that other, lesser, darker heap....
She stepped back in the house, then came out, and she had added nothing to her attire save her daddy's belt and guns. Without these she never left the Holding now. Bareheaded, slender, she was a thing of beauty, and there was a quiet command about her which subdued the great El Rey himself, the proudest horse in all the Valley, outside of Courtrey's Ironwoods, Bolt and Arrow.
He whirled, looked, drew his six-gun and began firing at the man who stood in plain sight just where he had stepped into the Cup from the mouth of a little blind cut where the stream went out in noise and lost itself. This was a big man, sinister and cold and dark, a half-breed Pomo of Courtrey's gang, a still-hunter who did a lot of the dirty work which the others refused.
Looked like some one'd branded several calves." "Don't doubt it," said the foreman. "Careful as we are there's always likely to be stragglers. An' to be a straggler's to be a goner in this man's land." "Unless he belongs t' Last's," said the irrepressible Billy. "I'll lay that fer every calf branded by Courtrey's gang we'll get back two." "Billy," said Tharon again, "Jim Last wasn't a thief.
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