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Updated: June 13, 2025
Swiftly and obediently the girl did as she was told, unrolling the wrapper from the package. She brought to light the meal-sack which Tharon had dropped that day on Baston's porch. A slow flush stained Tharon's cheeks at the sight, and she went abruptly into the house.
"All right," she said briefly, "let go an' I'll come." Without a word the man loosed her. She went to El Rey and mounted. Her riders mounted with her, Billy's face frowning and set. From the steps of Baston's store a few cowboys watched. There were no Stronghold men in town, for it was too early in the day. In silence Kenset led out of town at a brisk canter.
Sane as Kenset was, as cool and self-contained, he could not repress a cold prickle of resentment at that memory. He had gone to the Holding in such good faith, actuated by a lively desire to see Tharon again after that one amazing meeting at Baston's steps, and he had been so readily received at first, so coolly turned out at last.
Only when he rode between given points, unintent on the land around, did he give up to his speculations. At such times his mind invariably went back to that first day at Baston's steps and he saw her again as he had seen her then, tense, stooping, her elbows bent above the guns at her hips, coming backward along the porch, feeling for the steps with her foot.
All the Valley stood off and admired Jim Last's daughter. Pete basked in the reflected light. And Tharon herself had taken his gnarled old hand one day in Baston's store and called him a thoroughbred. Folks in Lost Valley were chary of words, conservative to the last degree. That simple word, the handclasp, the look in the clear blue eyes, had been his eulogy.
He was on fire with the vision of Tharon Last on the Cup Rim's floor, shaking her fist toward him in challenge at Baston's steps calling him a murderer and worse at her western door, striking him from her with the strength of a man.
She tied El Rey to himself, far from the rest, for she knew his imperious temper and that trouble would ensue if he was near strange horses. Then she went into Baston's with her meal-sack on her arm.
Then it seemed to come forward out of the mass of fleeting memories Kenset that day at Baston's steps shapely, trim, halted Kenset laughing over the little meal beside the table where the books lay Kenset grasping her shoulder when she whirled to mount El Rey and challenge the Stronghold single-handed to come forward like a calming, steadying thing and turn the pain to purpose.
As she struck the outskirts of the little town the unmistakable sound of El Rey's iron-shod hoofs brought heads into doors, children at the house corners to look upon her. She came down the main street at a smart clip, to bring up with a slide at the hitch-rail before Baston's store where the monthly mail was handled.
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