Tharon of Lost Valley Part 14

With the nearing of the line of hors.e.m.e.n a rider detached himself from the right of the herd and went sailing away across the levels toward the distant Stronghold.

Quick as a flash Tharon Last lifted the rifle that lay ready on her pommel and sent a shot whining toward him.

"Just to show we mean business," she muttered to herself.

The cowboy caught the warning and drew his running horse up to slide ten feet on its haunches.

He had meant to warn his boss, but a chance was one thing, certainty another.

"Dixon--Dement," called Tharon rising in her stirrups, "when we get to work you pick out as near as you can, cattle that look like yours, an'

th' same amount--not a head more."

Then they swung forward at a run and swept down along the left flank of the herd. Here a rider raised his arm and fired point blank at the leaders. One-two-three his six-gun counted. He was a lean youngster, scarce more than a boy, a wild admirer of Courtrey, and he stood his defence with a st.u.r.dy gallantry that was worthy of a better cause.

"d.a.m.n you!" he yelled, standing in his stirrups, "what's this?"

"Law!" pealed the high voice of Tharon as El Rey thundered down toward him. Then Buford, riding midway of the sweeping line, fired and the boy dropped his gun, swayed and clung to his saddle horn as his horse bolted and tore off at a tangent to the right, away from the herd.

"G.o.d!" cried the girl hoa.r.s.ely, "I wish we didn't have to! Did you kill him?"

"No," called Buford sharply, "broke his arm."

Tharon, to whom the high blue vault had seemed suddenly to swing in strange circles, shut her teeth with a click.

Abreast of the cattle she swerved El Rey aside, drew her guns and waited.

In among the grazing cattle, many of which had raised startled heads to eye the intruders, went the men. They worked swiftly and deftly.

They knew that they were in plain sight of the Stronghold and expected every moment to see Courtrey and a dozen riders come boiling out.

Those cowboys who had been in charge of the herd, sat where they were, without a move. Out of the bright ma.s.s the settlers cut first the ten head of steers, as nearly as possible all white, to take the place of Dixon's band. Thomas and Black stood guard over them. Then they went back and took out yellows and yellow-spotted to the number of one hundred. It was fast work, the fastest ever done on the Lost Valley ranges, and every nerve was strained like a singing wire.

Under the dust cloud raised by the plunging hoofs, the whirling horses, the workers kept as close together as possible.

They rounded up the cut-outs, bunched them together compactly and swinging into a half circle, drove them rapidly back toward the oak-fringed edge of the Cup Rim. They pa.s.sed close to where the slim boy stood by his horse, trying to wind the big red kerchief from his neck about his right arm from which the blood ran in a bright stream.

Tharon swung out of her course and shot toward him.

"Here," she cried swiftly, "let me tie it."

"To h.e.l.l with you," said the lad bitterly, raising blazing eyes to her face. "You've made me false t' Courtrey. I'd die first."

"Die, then!" she flung back, "an' tell your master that th' law is workin' in this Valley at last!"

As the last rider of the cavalcade went down over the slanting edge of the Cup Rim there came the sound of quick shots snapping in the distance and the belated sight of riders streaming down from the Stronghold hurried the descent.

They had reached the level floor of the sunken range and spread out upon it for better travelling before Courtrey and his men, some ten or fifteen riders, appeared on the upper crest.

The settlers stopped instantly at a call from Conford, drew together behind the cattle, turned and faced them. They were too far away for speech, out of rifle range, but the still, grim defiance of that compact front halted the outlaw cattle king and his followers.

For the first time in all his years of rising power in Lost Valley Courtrey felt a challenge. For the first time he knew that a tide was banking in full force against him. A red rage flushed up under his dark skin, and he raised a silent fist and shook it at the blue heavens.

The grim watchers below knew that gesture, significant, majestic, boded ill to them.

But Tharon Last, muttering to herself in the hatred that possessed her of late at sight of Courtrey, raised her own doubled fist and shook it high toward him, an answer, an acceptance of that challenge.

Then they calmly turned and drove the recovered cattle down along the sloping levels at a fast trot.

The die was struck. Lost Valley was no longer a stamping-ground for wrong and oppression. It had gone to war.

That night the white and yellow herd bedded at the Holding, _vaqueros_ rode about it all night long, quietly, softly under the stars. The settlers walked about, smoking, or sat silently in the darkened living room. At midnight Tharon and young Paula made huge pots of coffee which they dispensed along with crullers.

By dawn the cattle were well on their way, still safeguarded by the band of men, down toward the homesteads where they belonged.

During that night of unlighted silence plans had been perfected in low voices, a name chosen for the band itself. They would call themselves the Vigilantes, as many another organization had called itself in the desperate straits that made its existence imperative.

By sundown the hundred head had been driven, hot and tired, into John Dement's corrals, the ten white steers were bedded by Black's Spring over toward the Wall. They had farther to go and would not reach Dixon's until the morning.

And with each band there was a group of determined men.

Word of this exploit ran all over the Valley in a matter of hours. To each faction it had a deep significance.

But speech concerning it was spa.r.s.e as it had ever been anent the doings of Courtrey. A man's tongue was a prisoner to his common sense those days.

To Tharon Last, busy at her tasks about the Holding, it was a vital matter. She felt a strong surge, an uplift within her. She had begun the task she had set herself and solemn joy pervaded her being.

But of all those whom it affected there was none to whom it meant what it did to Courtrey himself. In him it set loose something which burned in him like a consuming fire. Where he had thought of Tharon Last before with a certain intent, now he thought of her in a sort of madness. He was a king himself, in a manner, an eagle, a prowler of great s.p.a.ces, a rule-or-ruin force. Down there on the sloping floor of the Cup Rim had been a fit mate for him in the slim girl who had shaken her fist back at him in strong defiance.

He felt his blood leap hot at the thought of her. She was built of fighting stuff. No pale w.i.l.l.y-nilly, like some he knew who wept whole fountains daily. No--neither was she like Lola of the Golden Cloud, past-master of men because she had belonged to many.

Courtrey, who had run life's gamut himself, thought of Tharon Last's straight young purity with growing desire.

It began to obsess him with a mania. His temper, bad at all times, became worse. Ellen, the veriest slave through her devotion to him, found her life at the Stronghold almost unbearable.

She was a white woman, like a lily, with transparent flesh where the blue veins showed. Her pale blue eyes, like the painted eyes of a china doll, were red with constant tears under their corn-silk lashes.

The pale gold hair on her temples was often damp with the sweat that comes with agony of soul.

"It jes' seems I can't live another minute, Cleve," she would tell her brother who lived at the Stronghold, "seems like I don't want to. Th'

very sunlight looks sad t' me, an' I hate th' tree-toads that are singin' eternal down in th' runnel."

This brother, her only relative, would stir uneasily at such times and the fire that shot from his eyes, light, too, under the same corn-silk lashes, was a rare thing. Nothing but this had ever set it burning. He was a slight man, narrow-chested and thin. They had been from run-down stock, these two, a strain that seemed indigenous to the Valley, without other memories. Their name was Whitmore, and they had lived all their lives in a poor cove up beyond the Valley's head where the barren rocklands came down out of the skies. There had been, besides themselves, only the father and mother, worn-out workers, who had died at last, leaving the brother and sister to live as best they might in the solitudes.

Here Courtrey had found them, both in their teens, and he had promptly taken them both along with their scant affairs. It was about the only thing to his credit that he had married Ellen, hard and fast enough, with the offices of a bona fide justice, a matter which he had regretted often enough in the years that followed.

It was this knowledge which set the light burning in Cleve's eyes.

He knew how Ellen loved Courtrey.

He knew also that Lola of the Golden Cloud had made the cattle king step lively for over a year. He saw the daily growing impatience with which Courtrey regarded his marriage.