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Word of this had been about Corvan and the Valley. And so she had Buck Courtrey at her mercy. She could close the lessening gap and kill him in his saddle But the icy blood still seemed to trickle down her back. She and Jim Last they had always fought in fair-and-open.
But a strange quietness seemed to settle down upon them. That for which they waited did not materialize. Courtrey and his gun men rode into Corvan and up and down the Valley on mysterious missions which were as unsettling as open depredations, but nothing happened. In fact, Courtrey, burning with the new desire that was beginning to obsess him, was working out a new design.
Underground speculation was rife as to which of the two women whom Courtrey favoured, Lola or Tharon, was responsible. Some said one, some the other. But Lola knew. Then came the day itself a golden summer day as sweet and bright as that one years ago when Courtrey had married Ellen at this same pine building where the laughable legal farces were enacted now.
There was again the rattle and creak, the whirl of hoofs, and in the breathless stillness that lasted for a few seconds, there came to the strained ears in the Golden Cloud the clip-clap of a singlefooter as the great El Rey led out of town. Then Buck Courtrey, flushed and unsmiling, sent his coldly narrowed eyes over the crowded room, man by man.
At his side clung the slim woman, Ellen, her milky face thin and tragic. He shook her loose and faced the newcomers. "Well?" he snapped, "what's this?" "Courtrey," said Banner, "we're here in th' name o' th' law. We demand t' see them guns o' yours." If the knowledge that Jim Banner was a brave man needed confirmation, it had it in that speech.
For instance, if she and Courtrey should draw at the same second, she believed absolutely, that because she was in the right, her bullet would travel a bit the swifter, her aim be truer. She felt in her heart with a profound conviction that some day she would kill Courtrey.
Not for nothing had he threaded these passages for fifteen years. He knew the Cañon Country for the lower part better than any man in the Valley, if Courtrey be excepted. So this night he climbed and shouted to his burros and thought no more of the sounding splits, for here the echoes raved, than he would have thought of the open plains below.
Here Courtrey had found them, both in their teens, and he had promptly taken them both along with their scant affairs. It was about the only thing to his credit that he had married Ellen, hard and fast enough, with the offices of a bona fide justice, a matter which he had regretted often enough in the years that followed. It was this knowledge which set the light burning in Cleve's eyes.
False entry, that's what! How many men's come in here, took up land, 'sold out' to Courtrey an' went? Or didn't go. A lot of 'em didn't go. We all know that. An' who dares to speak in a whisper about it? Th' men that did wouldn't go never nowheres." There was the bitterness of utter defeat and hatred in the shaking voice.
See," she dropped his hand and pointed to the east where the tall pine lifted to the stars, "out yonder there's a cross at Jim Last's grave an' there's my mark on it. Th' settlers have a leader still an' I name myself that leader. I'm set against Courtrey, now an' forever.
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