Tharon of Lost Valley Part 5

The man, tall, lean, dark, returned the salute with another nod.

He was covered with dust, as if he had ridden far and been a long time coming. His clothes were much the worse for wear, but they were mostly leather, which takes wear standing, as it were. The wide hat pulled low over his piercing dark eyes, was ornamented with a vanity of silver.

The riding cuffs at his wrists were studded profusely with the same metal, as was the wide belt that spanned his narrow waist.

He wore a three days' beard, and a black moustache dropped its long points to the edge of his jaw. Black hair showed beneath the hat. He was a remarkable figure, even in Lost Valley, and he commanded attention.

He carried the customary two guns of the country, and he bestrode a horse that was as noticeable as himself.

This horse was no denizen of Lost Valley. It was an utter alien. Its colour was a dingy black, as if it had recently been through fire, its coat rough and unkempt. Its long head was heavy and slug-like, its nose of the type known among hors.e.m.e.n as Roman. It was roughly built, raw-boned and angular, and of so stupendous a size that the man atop, who was six foot tall himself, seemed small by comparison.

However, for all its ugliness, it possessed a seeming of vast power, a suggestion of great strength.

The stranger looked the group over with his keen, hard eyes, and spoke in a slow drawl.

"I reckon," he said, "I'm a-ridin' th' wrong trail. I hain't expected hyar."

And turning abruptly, without another word, he jogged away around the house and started down the long slope already greying with the coming night.

The foreman and the five punchers clamped over to the corner of the kitchen and watched him in speculative silence. Tharon came along and stood by Billy, her hand on the boy's arm. To Billy that sober touch confused the distances, set the strange rider dancing on the slope.

"H'm," said Conford, his grey eyes narrow, "come from far an's goin'

somewheres. I'll watch that duck. He looks like he's a record man to me."

At supper there was much speculation about the stranger.

"I'll lay a month's pay he come from Texas," said Billy, casting a side glance at his pal Curly, "them long lankys usually do. An'

somehow it shows in their eyes, sort o' fierce an'--"

"Billy," said Tharon severely, "if I was Curly I'd take a fall out of you. He can do it, _you_ know that an' _I_ know it."

"Thanks, Miss Tharon," said Curly in his soft Southern drawl, "if you feel that-a-way about it, w'y, I don't care what _no_ little yellow-headed whipper-snapper from up Wyomin' way says to th'

contrary."

Billy was a bit abashed, but he stubbornly supported his contention that the stranger was a bad-man from Texas.

"Plenty bad-men right here in Lost Valley," said the girl quietly, "an' th' breed ain't dyin' out as I can see. Th' settlers need a new leader--now that Jim Last's gone." And she fell to playing absently with her fork upon the cloth.

The boys changed the subject hurriedly.

"I found a dead brandin' fire in th' Cup Rim yesterday, Burt," said Masters, "quite a scrabbled s.p.a.ce around it. Looked like some one'd branded several calves."

"Don't doubt it," said the foreman. "Careful as we are there's always likely to be stragglers. An' to be a straggler's to be a goner in this man's land."

"Unless he belongs t' Last's," said the irrepressible Billy. "I'll lay that fer every calf branded by Courtrey's gang we'll get back two."

"Billy," said Tharon again, "Jim Last wasn't a thief. Neither will his people be thieves. For every calf branded by Courtrey, _one calf_ wearin' th' J. L.--an' one calf only. We don't steal, but we won't lose."

"You bet your boots an' spurs throwed in, we won't," said the boy fervently.

As they rose from the table with all the racket of out-door men there came once more the sound of a horse's hoofs on the hard earth outside.

Last's Holding was a vast sounding-board. No one on horseback could come near without advertising his arrival far ahead.

This time it was no stranger. Tharon went to the western door to bid him 'light.

It was John Dement from down at the Rolling Cove. He was a thin, worn man, who looked ten years beyond his forty, his face wrinkled by the constant fret and worry of the constant loser.

Tonight he was strung up like a wire. His voice shook when he returned the hearty greetings that met him.

"Boys," he said abruptly, "an' Tharon--I come t' tell ye all good-bye."

"Good-bye! John, what you mean?"

Tharon went forward and put a hand on his arm. Her blue eyes searched his face.

The man stood by his horse and struck a tragic fist in a hard palm.

"That's it. I give up. I'm done. I'm goin' down the wall come day--me an' my woman an' th' two boys. Got our duffle ready packed, an' Lord knows, it ain't enough t' heft th' horses. After five year!"

There was the sound of the hopeless tears of masculine failure in the man's tragic voice. His fingers twisted his flabby hat.

"Hold up," said Conford, pushing nearer, "straighten out a bit, Dement. Now, tell us what's up."

"Th' last head--th' last hoof--run off last night as we was comin' in with 'em a leetle mite late. Had ben up Black Coulee way, an' it got dark on us. Just as we got abreast o' th' mouth of th' Coulee, where th' poplars grow, three men come a-boilin' out. They was on fast horses--o' course--an' right into th' bunch they went, h.e.l.l-bent.

Stampeded the hull lot. You know my bunch'd got down t' about a hundred head--don't know what I ben a-hangin' on fer, only a man hates t' give up an' own hisself beat out. An' my woman--she's a fighter.

"She kep' standin' at my back like, oh, like--well, she kep' a-sayin'

'We'll win out yet, John, you see. Right'll win ev'ry time.' You see we are just ready to get th' patent on our land. She couldn't give that up, seems like. All this time gone an' nothin' gained. So we ben a-hangin' on when things went from bad to worse. Th' herd's been a-goin' down an' down. Calves with their tongues slit so's they'd lose their mothers--fed up in some coulee by hand an' branded. Knowed 'em by my own colour cattle, w'ich I drove in here five year ago--th'

yellers.

"Mothers killed outright an' th' calves branded. Oh, I know it all--but what could I do? Kep' gettin' poorer an' poorer. Couldn't afford enough riders t' protect 'em. Then couldn't afford any an'

tried t' make it go as th' boys got older. Courtrey, d.a.m.n him, wants me offen that piece o' land a-fore th' patent's granted. Him with his twenty thousan' acres of Lost Valley now! An' how'd he get it? False entry, that's what! How many men's come in here, took up land, 'sold out' to Courtrey an' went? Or didn't go. A lot of 'em _didn't go_. We all know that. An' who dares to speak in a whisper about it? Th' men that did wouldn't go--never--nowheres."

There was the bitterness of utter defeat and hatred in the shaking voice. The tree-toads, beginning their nightly chorus from the wet places below the cottonwoods, emphasized the dreariness of the recital, the ancient hopelessness of the weak beneath the heel of the oppressor.

Dement ceased speaking and stood in silhouette against the last yellow-and-black of the dead sunset. The protruding apple in his hawk-like throat worked up and down grotesquely.

For a long moment there was utter silence.

Then he began again.

"I knowed I wasn't welcome in th' Valley when I hadn't ben here more'n six months. Th' first leetle string o' fence I put up fer corrals went down, mysterious, as fast as I could fix it. Th' woman's garden was broke open an' trampled to dust by cattle, drove in. Winter ketched us with mighty leetle t' eat in th' way o' truck. Next year she guarded it herself some nights, sleepin' by day, an' oncet she took a shot at some one that come prowlin' around. They let her fence alone after that, but what'd they do outside? Killed all th' hogs we had one night an' piled 'em in a heap in th' front door yard! That was hint enough, but I kep' a-thinkin' that ef we behaved decent like, an' minded our own business we sartainly must win out. We did," he added grimly after a little pause, "like h.e.l.l. An' how many others of th' settlers has gone through th' like? We ain't no tin G.o.ds ourselves, I own, but we got t' fight fire with fire. Only I ain't got no more light-wood," he finished quaintly, "I got to quit."

There was another silence while the tree-toads sang. Then the man held out his hand, hardened and warped with the unceasing toil of those tragic years.

"Good-bye, Tharon," he said, "I wisht Jim Last was here. With him gone Lost Valley's in Courtrey's hand an' no mistake. He was th' only man dared face him an' hold his own. Last's was th' only head th' weaker faction had, its master their only leader. While he lived we had some show, us leetle fellers. Now there ain't no leader. Th' ranchers'll go out fast now. It'll be a one-man valley."

In the soft darkness Tharon took the extended hand, held it a moment and laid her other one upon it.