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Black Bart and Wylackie Bob treated her with no more consideration than any of the Indian serving women. They swore and drank before her with an abandon that made the young man's nails cut deep in his palms at times, the blood mount high in his white cheeks.
At midnight that night he roused Wylackie Bob, Black Bart and the man who was known as Arizona, and the four of them went out on the levels for a secret talk. The next day the master of the Stronghold rode away on Bolt. As he left, Ellen, standing in the doorway like a pale ghost, lifted her tragic eyes to his face with the look of a faithful dog. "Where you goin', Buck?" she asked timidly.
The blood from that tossed right hand spurted over Wylackie Bob beside him, the gun it had held went hurtling away along the earth. There was a movement, a surge, the flash of guns and one of the settlers tumbled from his saddle, poor Thomas of the doubting heart. Courtrey's men flashed together as one, thundered backward to the wide doorstep, pressed together, waited.
Not a movement of his that was not reported faithfully to Courtrey, not a coming or going that was not watched from start to finish. And the cattle king narrowed his eyes and listened to his lieutenants with growing disapproval. "Took up land, think?" he asked Wylackie Bob. "Homesteadin'?" Wylackie shook his head. "Ain't goin' accordin' to entry," he said, "no more'n th' cabin.
Courtrey thinks he owns Lost Valley, an' he comes near doin' it, what with his hired killers, Wylackie an' Black Bart an' this new gun man that's just come in. I heered today he's from Arizona, an' imported article." Jameson turned to him and held out his hand. "I'm goin' to ride tomorrow," he said. Hill grasped the extended hand and looked hard in the other's eyes. "Me, too," he said.
The farce was finished save for the Judge's decision Dick Burtree was slumped in his chair, dead drunk and asleep. Wylackie Bob was lighting a cigarette in his brown fingers, a smile on his evil mouth, his slow, black eyes covering the slim white form of Ellen in a speculative way, as if he dreamed of making true his blasphemous lies.
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.
That she would never again sleep in the bend of Courtrey's arm as she had slept in those golden days of long ago that she was an outcast, blackened beyond all hope by the damning and unchoice words of Wylackie Bob.... Then the world faded out for Ellen in merciful blackness. The petty officials rose with laughter and clanking of boots on the board floors the crowd filed out in a striking silence.
Ellen was sweet as a flower in her open-lipped beauty, her panting despair. Wylackie did not notice the slim man beside her whose lips were so tight that they were a mere line across his face. No one at the Stronghold noticed Cleve much.
She made no doubt that they were Wylackie Bob and Black Bart, on Arrow and Slingshot. A sudden mist of fear came across her eyes. A tightening caught her throat. She looked around the illimitable spaces that stretched away on all sides. There was nothing in all the spreading plains but the three riders, sprung from nowhere, it seemed, and herself.
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