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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." "An' I ain't ashamed to say I'm glad, too," said Tharon.
You'll marry again, sometime " But Ellen shook her head with its maize-gold crown. "Nary other man, Cleve," she said gently. "I'm all Buck's woman." So they rode on toward the town, and Cleve knew that his last faint hope was dead. In the town itself there was a stir. Courtrey was there, and Wylackie Bob, and Black Bart and Arizona, a bunch of dark, evil men in all surety.
If I nod my head we'll drive this bunch o' spawn out o' here so quick it'll make your head swim! What do you think you're doin'?" "I don't think. I know now. Know what we can do what th' law means." Courtrey glanced again at Kenset. "Got some imported knowledge, I take it." "Take it or leave it! Show us them guns!" cried Tharon harshly. "I don't think so," said Courtrey, nodding.
She thought of Courtrey and Service and Wylackie Bob, of Black Bart and the stranger from Arizona. They were a hard bunch to tackle. They had the Valley under their thumbs to do with as they pleased, like the veriest Roman potentate of old. Her daddy had told her once, when she was small and lonely of winter nights, strange old tales of rulers and their helpless subjects.
He it was who saw who feared. He touched her wrist with timid fingers and she flashed him a swift glance that half melted to a smile. Then she forgot him and all the rest for the Ironwoods were thundering in from the outside levels, were coming into town. Ahead rode Courtrey, big, black, keen, his wide hat swept back on his iron-grey hair, an imposing presence.
Her blue-veined hands were so thin the light seemed to shine through them. Her long white dress clung to her slim form. From far back by the corral fence Cleve Whitmore watched her silently, his hands clenched hard. 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.
They fell in with her and so, with only the brother who had never failed her and these dusky women of the silent tongues to back her, Ellen Courtrey went to her crucifixion as truly as though she had been one of the two thieves on Golgotha. At the sight of Courtrey across the big bare room she went whiter than she was, if such a thing were possible, and slid weakly into the chair placed for her.
Then some one reached down and picked him up bodily. Another joined, and they set him on their shoulders, lifting him high. The inarticulate mob cry swelled and deepened and rose to a different sound a shout that gathered volume and roared out across the spaces where Courtrey rode with a menace, a portent. With one accord the mob started on a journey around Corvan.
He found the "Court House crowd" tight-lipped and careful. And Ben Garland set the day for trial at a ridiculously early date, for all the world as if the thing had been cut and dried at some secret conclave. Courtrey was playing his game with a daring hand, true to his name and habit. Dusk was falling in Lost Valley.
It was the pen-stroke at the end of the death-warrant to do so. She knew that the faction of the settlers hated him and his with a vitriolic passion, that they were in the minority, that they were no tin gods themselves, and that they were being beaten out, one by one. Year by year Courtrey had added to his vast acreage, and it was a matter of common knowledge how he had done it.