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The time had been when he would have depreciated in another man the utter weakness into which he had fallen. Bedient unearthed a companion at Treasure Island Inn, one whom he did not doubt for an instant to be the chief of Rey's agents assigned to watch his every movement. But even as a spy, old Monkhouse had helped him to sit tight, during that forty-eight hours.
An hour later, when all the Holding was quiet for the night, drifting to early rest after the day's hard work, the Mistress of Last's, booted, dressed in riding clothes, her fair head covered by a sombrero, her daddy's guns at her hips, crept softly to the gate of El Rey's own corral. She went like a thief, crouching, watching, without a sound, and saddled the big stallion in careful softness.
At the same time Cookson closed in upon his mounted infantry, while on the other side De la Rey's main force fell back in order to reinforce the escort. British and Boers were both riding furiously to help their own comrades. The two forces were fairly face to face.
For a long time she sat on El Rey's heaving back and stared unseeingly at the green earth where the short grasses quivered in the little wind. There was a deathly white line about her lips, but her eyes blazed with the fire that had characterized them from birth, the flickering, unfathomable flame that came and went.
For a long time the girl in the willows watched them. Then as they came near she rose and caught El Rey's bridle. He was no gentleman, this big blue-silver king. He was savage and wild and imperious. He hated other horses with a quick hatred sometimes and had been known to wreak this sudden rage upon them in sickening fury.
Then it was gone and she laughed, a whooping gale of joy, there alone in the green stretches between the earth and sky, with the note of El Rey's speed steadily rising in her ears. It beat in her very heart, that singing note. She loved the king as she loved nothing else on earth, save only the memory of her father.
She had felt him sail beneath her down the open prairies and always it was so, as if the earth slid by, as if the note of the wind lifted minute by minute. She had wondered often about this how long it would continue to rise with El Rey's rising speed, how long before he would reach a maximum above which he could not go, a place where the singing note would remain fixed.
"The company of my loyal servants is a great consolation to me." "May my race be accursed!" said Uncle Licurgo, striking his knee with his clenched hand, "if all this mess is not the work of the mistress' own nephew." "Of Don Juan Rey's son?"
No she was herself again Tharon Last, Jim Last's girl, the gun woman of Lost Valley and yonder went her father's killer. She leaned down and called again in El Rey's ear. No slightest spurt of speed rewarded her nothing but the rising note. Then she saw that the distance was widening just a tiny bit. Truly it was widening.
While she studied him he met her glance with the same grave look. Presently, without a word, she swung herself from the saddle, dropped El Rey's rein, and stepped around his shoulder. "All right," she said briefly, "but I won't stay any longer than I let you stay." For the first time Kenset laughed. "Twenty minutes, then," he said, "I don't think you let me exceed that limit."
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