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Updated: June 22, 2025
Then the girl stooped and rearranged the cushion in the big chair, laid a book more neatly on top of another at the table's edge. "Th' time is up," she said, "I must be goin'." She straightened her shoulders and looked at him again. "I thank you for th' meal," she said, "an' some day I'll return it in some manner. I don't know yet just what you're here for, nor if you're Courtrey's man or not "
He's been shot at more'n once fer takin' exception to some raw piece o' work in this Valley, fer pokin' his nose in, so to speak. Jim Last used to say he was th' only man at the Seat, which is Corvan, you know, of course." "District Attorney?" "Tom Nord. Keen as a razor an' married to Courtrey's sister. Now do you see why this is th' law?" She, too, tapped the gun.
As he turned, rolling his match to death in his fingers, the sun struck mellowly upon something on his breast, a small, dark copper shield which bore strange heraldry. At the sight Courtrey's eyes sought Service's and held them for a swift, questioning moment. Strangers in Lost Valley were contraband.
Courtrey, who kept close count of the favours he did for others, considered Cleve deep in his debt and paid him a niggardly wage. So it was, that when the newly organized Vigilantes under Tharon Last came out in broad day and took back their own from Courtrey's herds, there was one at the Stronghold who laughed quietly to himself in sympathy with the defy.
It stirred the small mirth there was in her these days, and often she sent them away, to have them turn up at the most unexpected times and places. "You boys!" she would say whimsically, "you think Courtrey's goin' to cart me off livin'?" "That's just what we are afraid of, Tharon," answered Conford gravely once, "we know it'd not be livin'."
And with each blaze, each mark and monument and sign, he drew closer in about him the net of suspicion and disapproval which was weaving in Lost Valley, for there was not one but ran the gamut of close inspection and speculation by Courtrey's men, by the settlers who came many miles over from the western side of the Valley for the purpose, and by Tharon's riders.
He played his trump card and it was a winner, sweeping the table for she knew before she finished that difficult reading that she would do anything in all the world to stop that "true bullet" in the heart that had pounded beneath her open palms.... Knew she would break her given word to Jim Last knew she would forsake the Holding that she would crawl to Courtrey's feet and kiss his hand, if only he would spare Kenset of the foothills, would send him out to that vague world of below, never to return!
She heard the drone of question and answer the rambling statements of the stranger, Arizona, accusing her of strange things of asking him to take her on rides in Courtrey's absence of swinging with him nights in the hammock by the watering trough! She sat and listened with parted lips and large innocent eyes fixed on the man in wonder.
A soft hand touched Courtrey's shoulder with a subtle caress. He wheeled on the instant, ready, alert. Then he smiled and reaching up, took the hand and held it openly. "Hello, Lola," he said, "how goes it?"
"I'm glad," said Tharon simply, "th' time has come when Lost Valley has got t' stand or fall forever. Courtrey's gettin' stronger every day, more careless an' open. He's been content to steal a bunch of cattle here, another there, a little at a time. Now he's takin' them by th' herds, like John Dement's last month. He's got a wife, an' from what I've always heard, she's a sight too good fer him.
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