Tharon of Lost Valley Part 25

There was a slim moon in the west above the Canon Country. The skies were softly alight, high and vaulted, deep and mysterious and sweet.

World-silence, profound as eternity, hung tangibly above Lost Valley and the Wall, the eastern ramparts of the shelving mountains, the rocklands at the north. There was little sound in all this sleeping wilderness.

Bird life was rare. The waters that fell at seasons from the open mouths of the canons half way up the Rockface were dried. Down in the Valley itself there could be seen the lights of Corvan which never went out from dusk to dawn. Far to the north a black blot might have been visible with a fuller moon--Courtrey's herds bedded on the range, the only stock in the Valley so privileged.

Along the foot of the Rockface in the early evening a tiny procession had crawled, three burros, their pack-saddles empty save for a couple of sacks tied across each, and a weazened form that followed them--Old Pete, the snow-packer, bound on his nightly journey to the Canon Country for the bags of snow for the cooling of the Golden Cloud's refreshments.

He was a little old man, grotesque and misshapen, yet he followed briskly after the burros, which were the fastest travelers of their kind in the land. He rolled on his bandy legs and kept the little animals on a constant trot with the wisp of stick he carried and the deep, harsh cries that heralded his coming for a mile ahead and sent the echoes reverberating between the canon walls. A little north of Corvan he had followed the Rockface close for a distance, then suddenly turned back on his tracks and disappeared, burros and all.

This was the invisible entrance to the Canon Country, a narrow mouth that opened sidewise into the very breast of the thousand-foot Wall and led back along a thin sheet of rock that stood between the gorge and the Valley. The floor of this cut or canon, which was so narrow that the laden burros had a "narrow squeak" to pa.s.s, as Pete said, lifted sharply. It rose smoothly underfoot in the pitch darkness, for the cut was roofed in the living rock five hundred feet above, and climbed for a mile. It was a dead, flat place, without sound, for the footsteps of the burros and the man fell dully on the soft and sliding floor, and it seemed to have no acoustic properties.

At the end of the mile this snake-like split in the solid rock came suddenly out into a broader, more steeply pitched canon whose walls went straight up to the open skies above. Here there were heaps and piles and long slides of dead stone, weathered and powdered, that had fallen from time to time from the parent walls. This in turn led up and on to other breaks and splits and cuts, all open, all lifting to the upper world, and all as blind and dangerous to follow as any deathtrap that old Dame Nature ever devised. Here, at any crosscut, any debouching canon, a man might turn to his undoing, might travel on and up and never reach those beckoning heights, seen clearly from some blind pocket he had wandered into, might never find his way back to the original canon among the continuous cuts that met and crossed and pa.s.sed each other among the towering points and sheets.

But Old Pete knew where he was going. Not for nothing had he threaded these pa.s.sages for fifteen years. He knew the Canon Country for the lower part better than any man in the Valley, if Courtrey be excepted.

So this night he climbed and shouted to his burros and thought no more of the sounding splits, for here the echoes raved, than he would have thought of the open plains below.

He pa.s.sed on and up to where a certain cut lay full, year after year, of packed and hardened snow. For fifteen years Old Pete had visited this cut, a deeper drop into the nether world of rock, and cut his supplies from its surface. Every season he took what he needed, leaving a widening circle at the edge from which he worked, where the cut he traveled pa.s.sed the mouth of the pent canon, and every year the snows, sifting from high above, leveled it again. There was no known outlet for this glacier-like pack, no sliding chance, yet it was always on a certain level--each summer seeming to lose just what it gained in winter. It lay level at the mouth of the pa.s.sing cut, was never filled higher.

Starting at dusk from Corvan, Pete reached his destination around two o'clock, filled his sacks, tied them on his mules and started down, coming out of the Rockface in time to meet the dawn that quivered on the eastern ramparts.

But this night Old Pete, st.u.r.dy, fearless, unarmed, was not to see the accustomed pageant of the rising sun, the fleeing veils of shadows shifting on the Valley floor that he had watched with silent joy for all these years.

This night he was well down along his backward way, shouting in the darkness, for the slim moon had dropped down behind the lofty peaks above, when all the echoes in the world, it seemed, let loose in the canons and all the weight of the universe itself came pressing hard upon his dauntless heart with the crack of a gun.

"Th' price!" whispered Old Pete as he fell sprawling on his face, "fer pure flesh!" With which cryptic word he bade farewell to the sounding pa.s.ses, the tenets of manhood as he conceived them, the valour, and the grumbling at life in general.

The little burros, placid and faithful, went on and saw the pageant of the dawn from the hidden gateway in the Wall, crept down the Rockface, single file, and at their accustomed hour stood at their accustomed place before the Golden Cloud.

It was Wan Lee, Old Pete's _bete noir_, who found them there and ran shouting through the crowd of belated players in the saloon's big room, his pig-tail flying, his almond eyes popping, to upset a table and batter on his master's door and scream that the "bullos" were here, "allesame lone," and that there was blood all spattered on the hind one's rump!

CHAPTER VIII

WHITE ELLEN

So old Pete, the snow-packer, had paid the price of gallantry. The bullet he had averted from Tharon Last's young head that day in the Golden Cloud but sheathed itself to wait for him. All the Valley knew it. Not a soul beneath the Rockface but knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who, or whose agents, had followed Pete that night to the Canon Country. Whispers went flying about as usual, and as usual nothing happened.

When the news of this came to Last's Holding the mistress sat down at the big desk in the living room, laid her tawny head on her arms and wept.

There was in her a new softness, a new feeling of misery--as if one had wantonly killed a rollicking puppy before her eyes. Those tears were Old Pete's requiem. She dried them quickly, however, and set another notch to her score with Courtrey.

It was then that the waiting game ceased abruptly.

Tharon, riding on El Rey, went in to Corvan. She tied the horse at the Court House steps and went boldly in to the sheriff's office.

Behind her were Billy, like her shadow, and the sane and quiet Conford.

Steptoe Service, fat and important, was busy at his desk. His spurs lay on a table, his wide hat beside them. The star of his office shone on his suspender strap.

"Step Service," said the girl straightly, "when are you goin' to look into this here murder?"

Service swung round and shot an ugly look at her from his small eyes.

"Have already done so," he said, "ben out an' saw to th' buryin'!"

Tharon gasped.

"Buried him already? How dared you do it?"

"Say," said Service, banging a fist on his table, "I'm th' sheriff of Menlo County, young woman. I ordered him buried."

"Where?"

"What's it to you?"

"Was Jim Banner there?"

"Jim Banner's sick in bed--got th' cholery morbus."

Tharon's eyes began to blaze.

"Bah!" she snapped, "th' time's ripe! Come on, boys," and she whirled from the Court House.

As she ran across the street to where the Finger Marks were tied, she came face to face with Kenset on Captain.

Her face was red from brow to throat, her voice thick with rage.

"You talked o' law, Mr. Kenset," she cried at the brown horse's shoulder, her eyes upraised to his, "an' see what law there is in Lost Valley! Step Service has buried th' snow-packer--without a by-your-leave from n.o.body! Th' man--or woman--that kills Courtrey now 'counts for three men--Harkness, Last an' Pete. I'm on my way to th' Stronghold."

She whirled again to run for the stallion, but the forest man leaned down and caught her shoulder in a grip of steel.

"Not now," he said in that compelling low voice, "not now. I want to talk to you."

"But I don't want to talk to you!" she flung out, "I'm goin'!"

Over her head Conford's anxious eyes met Kenset's.

"Hold her," they begged plainly, "we can't."

And Kenset held her, by physical strength.

The grey eyes of Billy were on him coldly. The boy was hot with anger at the man. He put a hand on Kenset's arm.

"Let go," he said, but Kenset shook him off.

"Come out on the plain a little way with me, all of you," he said, "this is no place to talk."