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Updated: June 22, 2025
He knew, as did all the Valley, that a price was on his head with Courtrey's band for the daring leap which had saved the life of Tharon Last that day in spring. Sooner or later that price would be paid, but Old Pete was true western stuff. He had lived his life, had had his day, and he was full of pride at the turn of fate which had made him a hero in a way at the end.
They said she could drive a nail farther than the ordinary man could see. They said she could draw so swiftly that the motion of the hands was lost. A slow excitement took the faction of the settlers. But out at Last's Holding a grave anxiety sat upon Tharon's riders. Conford knew and Billy knew and Curly knew more about Courtrey's intent than some of the others.
She could see the tiny dots that went for the different homesteads, scattered here and there. Up at the head there lay, hard against the frowning hills, the squat, wide blur that was Courtrey's Stronghold. Her lips compressed at sight of it. "Nope," she said, shaking her head, "I don't believe he meant it. He used to tease me a lot, you know. It's an awful big valley, an' no mistake."
"Courtrey's beginnin'," she said. "He's heard th' word I sent th' settlers. He's goin' t' use th' tactics now with Last's that he's used with every poor devil he wanted to run out of th' Valley, th' tactics he darsent use while Jim Last lived. Well go send Conford to me, Billy." The girl sat down in the doorway and gazed sombrely out over the summer land.
These stakes were old for the most part, but here and there had been set in a new one Courtrey's work, they made no doubt, for Courtrey was said to know the Cañons. It took Tharon and Billy two hours to make the climb, stopping from time to time to rest. At such times the boy stood close and took her hand.
She was held in a trance like those dreadful night-dreams when one is locked in deadly inertia, helpless. The net which had been weaving in Courtrey's fertile brain was finished, flung, and closing in upon her before she knew of its existence. An awe of his cleverness, his trickery, gripped her in a clutch of ice.
It struck that other wrist of Courtrey's, the left and sent his six-gun tumbling. Once again she yelled as she came back in her saddle. And El Rey was closing closing up the gap between. Once again Tharon raised her guns to shoot both, this time, as her daddy had taught her. This was the pinnacle of her life, her skill, her training. Never again would she live a moment like it.
Or was he even now lying stiff and stark somewhere in the high cuts, his dark eyes dull with death, that beating heart forever stilled? She caught her breath with a whistling sigh, felt her head swim at the picture. If he was if he was ! She fingered the big guns at her hip and savagery took hold of her. Courtrey's left wrist to match his right.
This day at noon these two strangers were riding down on Corvan from up the Pomo way, while from the Stronghold, Buck Courtrey's men were thundering in with the cattle king at their head. He was grim and silent, black with gathering rage.
There was no other horse in Lost Valley like the great king! Neither Redbuck nor Golden nor Drumfire! Neither Sweetheart nor Westwind! No, nor any Ironwood Bay that came down from Courtrey's Stronghold, Bolt and Arrow not excepted. Tharon laughed and stroked the king's neck, thewed like steel beneath her hands. She had no fear of Courtrey and his hired killers.
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