Tharon of Lost Valley Part 27

What did he mean by Tharon Last? What was this cold fire that burned him when he thought of her pulling those sinister blue guns on Courtrey? Did he fear to see her kill Courtrey--to see that shadowy stain on her hands--or did he fear something worse, infinitely worse--to see Courtrey, famous gun man, beat her to it!

He shuddered and sweat in the clear cold of the starlit night and searched his bewildered heart. He could find no answer save and except the weary one that Tharon Last must be holden from her sworn course.

Tharon Last who looked at him with those deep blue eyes and spoke so coolly of this promised killing! He recalled the earnest frown between her brows, the simple directness of her duty as she saw it and told it to him.

Either way--either way--she was lost to him forever--There he caught himself and started all over again.

What was she to him?

What could she ever be? She with her strange soul, _her lack of soul_!

What did he want her to be? One moment he ached with her loveliness--the next he shuddered at her savagery.

He did not want her to be anything! Why not go out to the dim and half-remembered world that he had left, the world of lights, padded floors and marble steps, leave this impossible land with its blood and wrongs? Nay, he could not leave Lost Valley. He was as much a part of it as the grim Rockface itself, the Vestal's Veil eternally shimmering in its thousand feet of beauty. Life or death, for Kenset, it must be here.

So he waited and listened and watched the stars wheeling in everlasting majesty, and he found his hands falling now and again upon the gun-b.u.t.ts at his sides!

Near dawn Banner awoke, refreshed and stronger, and made him lie down for a few hours' sleep.

When he awoke the sun was well up along the heavens and Banner was offering him a piece of dry bread and some jerky, spiced and smoked and as dry and sweet as anything he had ever eaten in all his life.

"They're comin'," said the man, "thar's five comin' from down along th' Wall at th' south--that'll be Jameson, Hill and Thomas, an' some others--an' I see about ten or twelve, near's I can make out, driftin'

in from up toward th' Pomo settlement. Thar's a dust cloud movin' up from th' Bottle Neck, too. They'll be here by one o'clock at th'

furdest."

And they were, a grim, silent group of men, determined, watchful, bent on the second step of the program to which they had pledged themselves that night at Last's Holding. Tharon was there, too, and with her Bent Smith on Golden.

It was a goodly number who left their horses in charge of Hill and Dixon at the blind mouth and entered the long black cut. They climbed in low spoken quiet, their voices sounding back upon them with an odd dead effect. They went faster than Old Pete was wont to travel, for they meant to reach the spot of the tragedy before the early shadows should begin to sift down from the high world above. Tharon went eagerly, her eyes dilated.

Always she had dreamed of the Canon Country. Always she had wondered what it was like. When she left the mouth of the black roofed cut and came out into the narrow, rockwalled canon with its painted faces reaching up into the very skies, she gasped with amaze. Above her head she could see the endless cuts and crosscuts, the standing spires and narrow wedgelike walls that made a labyrinthian maze.

Billy, close beside her, as always, watched her with a pensive sadness.

And so the Vigilantes went in and up along the lower ways. There were those among them who had been here before, who from time to time had accompanied the snow-packer on his nightly trips just for the curiosity of the thing. These several men, among whom were Albright from the Pomo settlement--a squawman--took the lead, and Albright, keen as a hound on trail, picked up Old Pete's marks and signs at a running walk.

And so it was, that, while the sun was still shining on the high peaks above and the canons were filled with a strange pink light reflected from the red and yellow faces of the rock, the Vigilantes came suddenly to a halt, for Albright had stopped.

"Here's where it happened," he said, "there's a blood-sign." And he pointed to the Wall at a spot about breast high. A thin dark line, no wider than a blade of gra.s.s and about as long, spraying out to nothing at the upper end, leaned along the rock like a native marking. No other eye had seen it. Not one in a thousand would have seen it.

"Good," said Kenset, "you're the man for more of this."

They crowded around and examined the telltale spray.

Not one among them but knew it for the stain of blood.

From that they spread out and back to search the sliding heaps of dust-like powdery rock-slide that lay everywhere along the walls.

It took Albright five minutes by Kenset's watch to find the disturbed and clumsily smoothed dump which held all that was mortal of the snow-packer.

"Miss Last," said Kenset as the men began to dig with the spades brought along for the purpose, "you had best step back a bit."

But Tharon pushed nearer.

"This is my work," she said with dignity. "I started this, I think."

It was a pitiful job that Service and those with him had done for Old Pete. Rolled head-first into a shallow hole--no doubt with jest and laughter--it was his booted foot which first came to view, sticking grotesquely up through the loose slide-stuff.

It was brief work and grim work that followed, and soon the weazened form, bent and stiffened into something hardly human, lay in the soft pink light on the canon's floor.

Jim Banner knelt and examined it carefully and minutely, then every man in the group did likewise. They found evidence of one simple, staring fact--Old Pete had been shot squarely from behind, a little to the left.

The bullet had undoubtedly pierced the heart--a great gaping hole in the left centre of the breast in front attesting its course.

"Here," said Albright, coming back from a short distance down, beneath the spray on the wall, "here's where something was taken up from th'

floor--th' blood he lost, I make no doubt."

"Gentlemen,--Miss Last," said Kenset, "I move we all move back and leave the ground to Albright. There is fine work here."

With one accord the ma.s.s moved back, clearing a goodly s.p.a.ce.

In the immediate vicinity there was little chance of doing anything, for Service's bunch, and themselves, had trampled over the soft floor until all original traces of the murder were blotted out.

Albright looked around and seemed to hesitate.

"Me, alone?" he asked. "Gimme d.i.c.k Compos, there."

"Done," said Kenset.

A tall, silent half-breed stepped forward and without another word the two began to scan the walls, the floors, the heaps of rotted rock, the loose and tumbled boulders, not yet decomposed, that lined the cut on both sides.

They stood in their tracks and looked, and the concentration in their eyes was akin to that in the eyes of a wild animal, hiding, hard-pressed, and looking for a loophole for life.

The Vigilantes watched them in silence.

Presently d.i.c.k Compos stepped forward, leaned down and searched the wall at the left. Then he went forward, bent over, scanning each inch.

He looked above and below, the height of a man's shoulders, his hips, his knees.

Then he crept back, stopped at a particular upstanding piece of stone, searched it closely--stepped in behind.

When he came out he looked over at Tharon Last standing at the head of her people.

"Some one went along th' Wall here," he waved a slender brown hand at the canon face. "Three signs--here--here--here."

He indicated the heights he had scanned. They stepped a bit nearer and looked. Several pairs of Valley eyes saw what d.i.c.k Compos had seen, a sign so fine that few would have called it that--merely a brushing, a smoothing of the fine-sandstone surface where a man's shoulders, his hips, his knees might have pressed had he stood waiting there.

A bit nearer the standing pinnacle of rock, they were evident again.

With one accord they turned and looked down the canon to where that thin line sprayed the face. A close shot, such as would be necessary in the darkness of the cut. Albright and Compos both stepped to the rock and stood looking with those narrowed, concentrated eyes.