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These strangers with their hidden signs of authority would bring to his just desserts Buck Courtrey, the man who had instigated the killing of poor Harkness, who had personally shot her daddy in the back! For them, then, she had made her crosses of promise in the granite under the pointing pine. They who had no right in Lost Valley would settle its blood scores, would pay her debts!
"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.
"I don't believe," she said at last, "that there's a bunch of horses in Lost Valley to come nigh 'em. Ironwoods or anything else I'd back th' Finger Marks." "So would we," said Conford quietly, "though we've seen th' Ironwoods run a little." "That's th' word, Burt," said Curly, "a little. Who of us has ever seen Courtrey let Bolt run like he wanted to? Not a darned one.
At one, The Golden Cloud, more pretentious than the rest, there foregathered the leading spirits of the Valley. Here Courtrey came and played and drank, his henchmen with him. He was in high mettle this night. Always a contained man, slow to laughter and to speech, he seemed to have unbent more than usual, to respond to the human nature about him. He was not playing steadily as was his wont.
If it had not been for the glade in the pines, she wondered where she would be now driven deep into Black Coulee, she made no doubt, a prisoner to Courtrey. "All right," she said abruptly, "I'll stay. But you must be quick. Th' time is goin' fast."
"I beg your pardon, Mister," she said quaintly, "fer that day at the Holdin' an' th' meal I offered an' took, an' fer my words. I know now that you are that you were straight. I don't yet know what you may mean in Lost Valley with your talk of Government, but I do know you ain't a Courtrey man." Kenset took the hand. It was firm and shapely and vibrant with the young life there was in her.
"Saints forbid, Señorita!" said Paula, who had no love for the mysterious, and who was more Mexic than Porno, "there are demons and devils there!" "Yes, I doubt not, Paula," said Tharon grimly. "They say Courtrey knows th' Cañons, an' when he's there, it's peopled, an' no mistake! "But it must be beautiful beautiful!
That was no word to conjure by in Lost Valley. Steptoe Service prated of Gov'ment. It was a farce, a synonym for juggled duty, a word to suggest the one-man law of the place, for even Courtrey, who made the sheriffs and unmade them did it under the grandiloquent name of Government. She looked at him keenly, and there was a sudden hardening in her young eyes.
If it hadn't of ben that I love you, what you think I'd a-done to that bunch? That's th' truth. I ben holdin' off thinkin' you'd come to your senses an' see that Buck Courtrey ain't to be met with vilence. Now I'm playin' my trump card now, tonight. "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.
At any or all costs he must stop this blue-eyed girl from riding north to challenge Courtrey on his doorstep. The blood congealed about his heart at the thought. Where the rolling levels came up to the confines of the town they rode out far enough to be safe from eavesdroppers, halted and faced each other. "Miss Last," said Kenset gently, "I'm a stranger to you.
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