Tharon of Lost Valley Part 18

"Yeeoo! Yeeoo! Yeeoo!" she cried, a high, exciting note that keened in the singing wind. And El Rey, ever keen to run for no reason, finding himself called upon, stretched out his great body, dropped low to earth and began to run. The wind cut by Tharon's face like a knife in the first few leaps.

It shut her eyes in a dozen. She rode and laughed with a half sob in her throat. The thunder of the king's iron-shod hoofs was in her ears like the roar of the spring freshets when the empty canons poured their temporary torrents down the Rockface into the Valley.

She knew he was running as she had never ridden before. She had never called upon him before. It was like being adrift upon the wind. She heard the note of his speed rising in her ears. It was as it had ever been, save that it was a higher note, thinner, sharper. There was scarce a sense of touch beneath her, a lack of jar, of vibration, so evenly and smoothly did the shining hoofs take the gra.s.sy plain.

Tears were in her eyes. Laughter was on her lips. This was speed indeed! She had a sick longing that Jim Last might see his two loved ones go!

Then she gathered herself to turn her head across her leaning shoulder and look back.

As her eyes swept into focus behind, the laughter slipped off her lips as if wiped by an invisible hand.

There, the same distance away as when they started, rode Courtrey!

No farther away!

Bolt, shining in the sun, was keeping pace with El Rey!

Farther back--a little farther back--was Arrow, running magnificently, too.

A greater distance behind the two came Slingshot.

Tharon was frightened. Not for herself. Not for the intent of the men who came after her. Not for gun-fire, nor for capture.

She was afraid for the king! Afraid that Bolt could hold that wonderful pace! Then a surging rage rose and sickened her.

She leaned down again and called once more into the stallion's ear and once more the note rose a notch. She felt that great pulsing seeming of reserve. Always when she called there was the answer. The plain swam beneath her like a blur. The thunder of the king's hoofs was a single note also.

Then Tharon raised her eyes and saw that she had left the open land behind. The mountains were rising swiftly before, she was sweeping up their skirts. Trees flew by. She heard the singing of waters. The forests seemed to come down out of the skies to meet her, dark, forbidding.

She felt a sense of disaster, of helplessness. Where was she going, she and El Rey, with her enemies behind and coming fast? What was to be the end of the race? And then, all suddenly, the woods seemed to fall away on either side, a gateway to open up before her. A lovely open glade spread into the heart of the forest and the great king thundered in between the guarding pines. Like a silver flame he shot up the sloping floor, slowed, changed and came to stop before a cabin that sat securely at the glade's head.

With the crashing pound of El Rey's ploughing hoofs upon the very stones at the step, a man came quickly from the interior of the cabin and stepped out, his hand lifted.

Tharon Last, her hair beating on her shoulders, her face pale as ashes, her breast heaving, looked back toward the opening in the trees, and saw Courtrey swing in a wide arc and circle past to disappear toward the north.

After him swept his two lieutenants, to fade swiftly from sight behind the shielding forest.

A grim expression spread over the face of the man at the step as he, too, beheld the end of the vital play.

Then he looked up at the girl on the silver stallion and his dark eyes were alight.

"What's this?" he asked abruptly.

Then Tharon seemed to become conscious of him for the first time.

She looked down at him and the black pupils were spread across the azure of her eyes, making them strangely exciting in their straight glance.

"This," she said, panting, "is some of the law of Lost Valley.

Courtrey's law. That is the man I'm goin' to kill some day."

Kenset felt the blood flow back upon his heart, an icy flood. The words were simple, sincere, unconscious of dramatic effect. They were as final as death itself, and he dropped his eyes unconsciously to the two guns at her hips. He wondered why she had ridden without a shot this time.

He found his lips suddenly dry and moistened them before he spoke.

"Why?" he asked, and his voice sounded strange to him.

"Because," said Tharon simply, "because he kissed me--once--an' shot my daddy--in th' back, th' hound!"

"G.o.d!" said Kenset

For a moment there was silence while a bird called sharply from a pine top and the voice of the little stream became subtly audible.

It seemed to the man that all his values of life had suddenly become shifted, changed. The commonplace had become the unreal, the unlikely the familiar.

Guns and threats and racing horses with a woman for prize became on the moment natural events in this hidden setting.

And what a woman she was! He looked up in her face again and saw there sweetness and strength, and grim purpose beyond his conception. He knew that her words were downright, and that they meant no more to her than duty to be done, a conscience cleared of debt. He glanced at the hand lying so quietly on the pommel and thought of it as stained with blood. At the fancy he frowned and mentally shook himself.

Then, with an impulse wholly beyond his command, he reached up and laid his own hand over that one on the pommel.

"Miss Last," he said gravely, "I have no words to express what I feel this moment about Lost Valley and its people. Will you get down and let me show you my house, here in my glade?"

Tharon sat quietly for a moment and looked down at him. She did not remove her hand from under his, neither did she seem to be conscious of it.

"Why should I?" she asked presently, "you don't owe me anything. I sent you away from my house. I wouldn't have come here if I'd known where I was goin'. It was a chance."

"Granted. And yet I want you to come across my threshold, to sit in my big chair. Will you come?"

Never in her life had the girl heard so low a voice. It was soft and gentle, yet full of a vibrant quality that belied its softness. The man himself was unlike Lost Valley men. He wore the olive drab trousers of the semi-military uniform, the leather leggings, a tan leather belt and a soft woolen shirt of the same drab color. It lay open at the throat, and the base of his strong neck was white as a woman's. The dark eyes upturned to hers were deep and winning. The dark beard showed through his sharply shaven cheeks where the red blood pulsed, like dusky shadows.

A strange man, surely.

Tharon wondered what made him so different from other men she had known. There was Billy who had come into Lost Valley from somewhere "below," and Conford, and Curly. Jack Masters had been born in the Valley. So had Bent Smith. These men were her men, like herself and Jim Last. This man was from "below," too, yet he was unlike.

While she studied him he met her glance with the same grave look.

Presently, without a word, she swung herself from the saddle, dropped El Rey's rein, and stepped around his shoulder.

"All right," she said briefly, "but I won't stay any longer than I let you stay."

For the first time Kenset laughed.

"Twenty minutes, then," he said, "I don't think you let me exceed that limit."

He led the way to the door, stepped back and let her enter. As she did so she pa.s.sed close to him and caught the scent of him, the clean soft smell of shaving soap, blended with the aroma of good tobacco.

That, too, was different.