Tharon of Lost Valley Part 12

He caught the drift of her thought in part.

"For no outfit, Miss Last," he said with a gentle dignity. "I am in the employ of the United States Government."

A swift change came over Tharon's face.

Government!

That was no word to conjure by in Lost Valley. Steptoe Service prated of Gov'ment. It was a farce, a synonym for juggled duty, a word to suggest the one-man law of the place, for even Courtrey, who made the sheriffs--and unmade them--did it under the grandiloquent name of Government. She looked at him keenly, and there was a sudden hardening in her young eyes.

"Then I reckon, Mister," she said coolly, "that you an' me can't be friends."

"What?"

"No, sir."

"Are you in earnest?"

"Certainly am," said Tharon. "I ain't on good terms at present with anything that has t' do with law."

David Kenset leaned forward and looked into her face with his deep, compelling eyes.

"I guessed as much from my first knowledge of you the other day," he answered, "but we are on unfamiliar ground. You have a wrong conception of Government, a perverted idea of law and what it stands for."

"All right, Mister," said the girl rising. "We won't argy. I asked you t' dinner, but I take it back. I ask ye t' forgive me my manners, but th' sooner we part th' better. Then we won't be a-hurtin' each other's feelin's. I'm fer law, too, but it ain't your kind, an' we ain't likely to agree."

She picked up his hat from where it lay on the melodeon and fingered it a bit, smiling at him in the ingenuous manner that was utterly disarming.

A slow dark flush spread over the man's face. He laughed, however, and in reaching for the hat, caught two of her fingers, whether purposely or not, Tharon could not tell.

"Admirable hospitality in the last frontier," he said. "But perhaps I should not have expected anything different."

"You make me ashamed," said Tharon straightly, "but Last's ain't takin' chances these days. You may belong to Government, an' you may belong to Courtrey, an' I'm against 'em both."

She walked with him to the door, stepped out, as if with some thought to soften her unprecedented treatment of the stranger under her roof.

She noted the trim figure of him in its peculiar garb, the proud carriage, the even and easy comportment under insult.

From his saddle he untied a package wrapped in paper.

"Will you please take this?" he asked lightly, holding it out. "Just on general principles."

But she shook her head.

"I can't take no favours from you when I've just took stand against you, can I?" she asked in turn.

"Well, of all the ridiculous----"

The man laughed again shortly, tossed the package on the step, mounted, whirled and rode away without a backward glance.

Tharon stood frowning where he left her until the brown horse and its rider were well down along the levels toward Black Coulee.

Then a sigh at her shoulder recalled her and she turned to see the wistful dark face of Paula gazing raptly in the same direction.

"He was so handsome, Senorita," said the girl, "to be so hardly dealt with."

"Paula," said the mistress bitingly, "will you remember who you're talkin' to? Do you want to go back to th' Pomos under th' Rockface?"

"Saints forbid!" cried Paula instantly.

"Then keep your sighs for Jose an' mind your manners. Pick up that bundle."

Swiftly and obediently the girl did as she was told, unrolling the wrapper from the package.

She brought to light the meal-sack which Tharon had dropped that day on Baston's porch.

A slow flush stained Tharon's cheeks at the sight, and she went abruptly into the house.

When the riders came in at night she told them in detail about the whole affair, for Last's and its men were one, their interests the same.

They held counsel around the long table in the dining room under the hanging lamp, and Conford at her right was spokesman for the rest.

"He's somethin' official, all right, I make no doubt, Tharon," he said when he had listened attentively, "but what or who I don't know. I heard from Dixon about him comin' into Corvan that day, an' that he had rode far. No one knows his business, or what he's in Lost Valley for. He's some mysterious."

"He's goin' to stay, so he told me," went on the girl, "goin' to build a house up where the pines begin an' means to ride. But how'll he live? What an' who will he ride for? He said for Government."

"What's he mean by that?"

"Search me."

"Wasn't there nothin' about him different? Nothin' you could judge him by?" asked Billy.

"Yes, there was. He wore somethin' on his breast, a sign, a dull-like thing with words an' letters on it."

"So?" said Conford quickly, "what was it like, Tharon? Can't you describe it?"

"Can with a pencil," said Tharon, rising. "Come on in."

She went swiftly to the big desk in the other room and rummaged among its drawers for paper and pencil. These things were precious in Lost Valley.

Jim Last had had great stacks of paper, neat, glazed sheets with faint lines upon them, made somewhere in that mysterious "below" and brought in by pack train. It was on one of these, with the distinctive words "Last's Holding" printed at the top, that the thirty men had signed themselves into the new law of the Valley.

To Tharon these sheets had always been magic, invested with grave dignity.

Anything done upon them was of import, irrevocable.

Thus had Jim Last inscribed the semi-yearly letters that went down the Wall with the cattle, or for supplies.

Now she spread a shining pad under the light, sat down in her father's chair and began, carefully and minutely to reproduce the badge that meant authority of a sort, yet was not a sheriff's star.