Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 20, 2025
From out of the bushes behind him a voice came. "That last's a good prophecy, Mr. West. It'll be just as you say." The big fellow wheeled, the rifle jumping to his shoulder. Instantly he knew he had been tricked, led into a trap. They must have heard him coming, whoever they were, and left his own men for bait. From the other side two streaks of scarlet launched themselves at him.
Its double-tongued fastener was twisted far awry, as if it had been wrenched away by violence. Conford turned and looked back to the cabin, as if he measured the distance. "There's been funny work here as sure's hell," he said profoundly. Then they rode on, all silent, thinking. It was near dawn when they rode up along the sounding-board and put in at Last's.
He fretted and ate out his heart for the freedom of the range. Old Anita, passing at some work or other, stopped and gazed at him for a compassionate moment. "You, too, grande caballo," she said, "there is naught but grief at Last's Holding. Tharone querida" she called into the house, "come here." Tharon came and stood in the kitchen door. "What, Anita?" she asked gently.
With a deadly knowledge she was printing them indelibly upon her heart. Presently Jim Last sighed and opened his eyes. They sought hers and he smiled, a tender lighting from within. He fumbled for the buckle of his gun-belt. The girl unclasped it and pulled it free. She noticed that both guns were in their holsters. "Put it on," whispered the master of Last's Holding.
She knew that surely and swiftly this man had gone down the path of unreasoning love, that he would give anything he possessed, do anything possible, to win for himself this slim mistress of Last's Holding. Therefore she played the one card she held, hoping to rouse the bully, and did just the thing she was trying to avert.
Therefore, from a block of the hard grey stone of the region, which was almost like granite, he fashioned a cross, as tall as Tharon herself, struck it out freehand and true, and set upon its austere face fine tracery of vines and Jim Last's name. He took into the secret Billy and Curly, since these two he was sure of, and together they hauled the huge thing out and set it up.
"We saw Courtrey an' his ruffians ridin' up east watched 'em with th' glass, an' Anita said you rode south. Thought you might have met 'em." "I didn't meet 'em, so to speak," she said, smiling, "though if I'd been on anythin' but El Rey I would. They tried to drive me into Black Coulee." "Hell!" said Billy softly. Then the Mistress of Last's remembered her manners.
And they were, a grim, silent group of men, determined, watchful, bent on the second step of the program to which they had pledged themselves that night at Last's Holding. Tharon was there, too, and with her Bent Smith on Golden. It was a goodly number who left their horses in charge of Hill and Dixon at the blind mouth and entered the long black cut.
There was something in the memory that confused and distressed her, a feeling of failure, of a lack in her that put her in a bad light to herself. She knew that, instinctively, she had been protecting her own, that since Last's had stepped out in the light against Courtrey she must take no chance. But should she have taken back the common courtesy of the offered meal?
The wind sang by her ears in a rising whine, the green prairie was a flowing sea beneath her, the thunder of the pounding hoofs was stupendous music. Tharon shut her eyes and rode, and for the first time since Jim Last's death a sense of joy rose in her like a tide. She had ridden El Rey before, many times.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking