Part 10 (1/2)

Jameson, Hill and Thomas were as good as their word. During the week that followed the spectacular denouncement of Courtrey and Service at Baston's store, they went quietly to every settler in the Valley and declared themselves. In almost every instance they met with eager pledges of approval. They knew, every man of them, that this slow banding together for resistance against Courtrey and his power meant open war. For years they had suffered indignities and hards.h.i.+p without protest. While Jim Last lived they had had a sort of leader, an example, though they had feared to follow in his lead too strongly.

They had copied his methods of guarding possessions, of corraling every cattle-brute at night, of keeping every horse under bars. Last had looked Courtrey in the face. The rest dared not.

Now with Last gone, they felt the lack, as if a bastion had been razed, leaving them in the open. Secrecy in Lost Valley had been brought to a work of art. They could hold their tongues.

But with the new knowledge Tharon Last took on a light, a halo.

Men spoke in whispers about her daring. They felt it themselves.

Word of her lightning quickness with her daddy's guns, of her accuracy, went softly all about and about, garbled and accentuated.

They said she could shoot the studs from the sides of a man's belt and never touch him. 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. Young Paula, half asleep in the deep recesses of the house, had witnessed that furious encounter by the western door on the soft spring day when Jim Last had come home to die at dusk. She knew that the look in Courtrey's eyes had been covetousness--and she had told Jose. Jose, loyal and sensible, had told the boys. So now there was always one or more of them on duty near the mistress of Last's on one pretext or another. To Tharon, who knew more than all of them put together, this was funny.

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 Tharon had looked away toward Jose's cross, and frowned.

”No,” she said, ”an' it won't be any way, _livin'_ or dead.”

One night toward the end of that week a strange cavalcade wound up along the levels, past the head of Black Coulee, forded the Broken Bend in silence save for the stroke of hoof and iron shoe on stone, and went toward Last's. There were thirty men, riding close, and they had nothing to say in the darkness.

At the Holding Tharon Last waited them on her western doorstep.

As they rode in along the sounding-board the m.u.f.fled ringing of the hoofs seemed to the girl as the call of clarions. The heart in her breast leaped with a strange thrill, a gladness. She felt as if her father's spirit stood behind her waiting the first step toward the fulfillment of her promise.

The riders stopped in the soft darkness. There was no moon and the very winds seemed to have hushed their whispers in the cottonwoods.

”Tharon,” said the man who rode in the lead, and she recognized the voice of Jameson from the southern end of the Valley, ”we've come.”

That was all. A simple declaration, awaiting her disposal.

Conford, not half approving, his heart heavy with foreboding, stood at his mistress' shoulder and waited, too.

For a long moment there was no sound save the eternal tree-toads at their concert. Then the girl spoke, and it seemed to those shadowy listeners that they heard again the voice of Jim Last, sane, commanding, full of courage and conviction.

”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. But he wants more--he wants _me_. He's offered me th' last insult, an' as Jim Last's daughter I'm a-goin' to even up my score with him, an' it's got three counts. You've all got scores against him.”

Here there were murmurs through the silent group.

”Th' next outrage from Courtrey, on any one of us, gets all of us together. For every cattle-brute run off by Courtrey's band, we'll take back one in open day, all of us ridin'. We'll have to shoot, but I'm ready. Are you?”

Every man answered on the instant.