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Updated: June 4, 2025
The sweet, disarming smile parted her lips and she was all girl at the moment, artless, innocent, unstained by the shadow of lawlessness and crime that seemed to ever hang above her in Kenset's thoughts. "Are you?" "I certainly am." He swung down, gave Captain a drink at the edge of the spring farthest from El Rey, dropped the rein when he had finished, and swung around to face the girl.
The twilight had fallen and all the western part of the Valley was blue with shadow. Only on Kenset's foothills was the rosy light glowing, a tragic, aching light, it seemed to her. She saw all the little world of Lost Valley with new eyes, sombre eyes, in which there was no sense of its beauty. She wondered anxiously how soon she could meet Courtrey, and where.
"Tired, Captain?" he asked whimsically, rubbing the sweaty mane, while the animal drew a long whistling breath and in turn rubbed the sticky brow band on its forehead on Kenset's arm. "Looks like he's thirsty," said Ellen presently. "There's a trough round yonder at th' back," and she waved a long hand.
What could he do when there wasn't another man in th' Valley dared to stand behind him? You saw what happened to Pete. He struck up Courtrey's arm when he shot at Tharon one night last spring. Th' same thing'd happen to Banner if he tried to pull off anythin' like that." A light flamed up in Kenset's eyes.
"If you, Miss Last," he said straightly, "will give me your word to do no shooting, something like that will be pulled off here, and shortly." He looked directly at Tharon, and for the first time in her life she felt the strength of a gaze she couldn't meet not fully. But Tharon shook her head. "I'm sworn," she said simply. Kenset's face lost a bit of colour.
At its end Kenset's eyes were deep and troubled, but Tharon's were beginning to glow with the old fire that all the Holding knew, the leaping flame that rose and died and rose again, exciting to the beholder, promising, threatening, unfathomable. "Why, it's a cinch!" said O'Hallan, "a dead moral cinch! Don't see how it's held on like it has.
Over her head Conford's anxious eyes met Kenset's. "Hold her," they begged plainly, "we can't." And Kenset held her, by physical strength. The grey eyes of Billy were on him coldly. The boy was hot with anger at the man. He put a hand on Kenset's arm. "Let go," he said, but Kenset shook him off. "Come out on the plain a little way with me, all of you," he said, "this is no place to talk."
"Lord, Lord," said Billy to himself, "she's listenin' when he speaks like she never listened to any one before!" In Kenset's mind drilled over and over again the ceaseless thought "A hand or a heart she could hit them both with ease. It's true, true, she's a gun woman! Oh, Tharon, Tharon!" and he did not know he spoke her name beneath his breath.
How long he stood there he did not know. His heart was dead, like the weathered stone country about him. He knew that he heard Tharon's voice after a while, that golden voice which had been the bells of Last's, in rapid question and answer and Kenset's voice, too, weak and slow, but filled with joy unspeakable.
The moon was up in majesty, and by its light Jack Masters suddenly leaned down to look at something, pulled up, swept down from his saddle, cowboy fashion, hanging by a foot and a hand, and picked up something which he examined keenly. "Look," he said quickly, "th' beet-man's badge!" He held out on his palm a small dark object, the copper-coloured shield which had shone on Kenset's breast!
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