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Updated: June 22, 2025
He was rich, powerful, bullying, a man whose self-aggrandizement knew no limit, whose merest whim was his law, whose will must not be thwarted. Year by year his vaqueros drove down the Wall herds of fat cattle, their brands blurred, insolently raw and careless. Many a hapless man had stood and seen his own stock go by in Courtrey's band and dared not open his mouth.
There were horses tied there, and among them she saw what caused her to look twice with a narrowing of her keen eyes a huge, raw-boned, black, rusty and slug-headed, among the Ironwood bays from Courtrey's Stronghold. "H'm," she told herself quietly, "so there's where he was expected."
"There is use, Tharon," he panted. "It's vital! Since that day on Baston's steps, when you backed out past me I have had you in my mind my thoughts by day and night there is use, and I'll keep your hands from blood Courtrey's or any other if it takes my life so help me God!" The girl leaned down and her blue eyes blazed in his face.
"I don't want you, Billy, dear," she said miserably, "not because I don't love you, but because I ain't a-goin' to see you shot by Courtrey's gang. This is one time, boy, when I want you to leave me alone, to go back without me." The rider shook his head against the stars. "Couldn't do it, little girl," he said wistfully, "you know I couldn't do it."
Few men in the world could have made it, and gotten away with it. None in a different setting. Courtrey heard it, but he paid little heed to it at the moment. His eyes went to the face of Tharon Last and drank in its beauty hungrily. Presently he shifted his gaze and regarded Kenset with a cold light that was evil. "Who wants 'em?" he asked drawlingly. "We do." "Hell! Want Courtrey's guns!
"Then by th' Eternal!" swore Cleve softly, "here you'll stay if it takes all th' law in th' United States to keep you here. I'll file your answer tomorrow protest to th' last word!" And he rode into Corvan, only to find that Courtrey and Courtrey's influence had been there before him, that a cold sense of disaster seemed to permeate the town and all those whom he met therein.
"Here's your man!" said Kenset softly, rising excitedly on his elbow. "He's coming! And God grant that there is no bloodshed!" All of Corvan, so long meek and quiet under Courtrey's foot, moved dramatically back to give him room to come thundering down to his accounting. In a few seconds he would be encompassed by his enemies.
Once again the crowd in the room stirred and Courtrey's narrow eyes went over it in that cold, promising glance. For once in his life Courtrey, the bully, felt a premonitory chill down his spine because for the first time that promising glance of his failed of its effect! Only here and there along the rows of faces did one cower.
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.
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