Tharon of Lost Valley Part 9

"Me, too," he said.

Thomas, still of the timid, doubting heart, watched them with a hand over his mouth to hide its shaking.

Without a word the others turned their horses and rode away in different directions. As they went farther from him in the wash of the late light the uncertain hand came down with a jerk. Fear was in his eyes, the deep, quaking fear of the man poor in courage, but he beat it down.

"Boys!" he cried in a panic, "don't leave me out! For G.o.d's sake, don't think I ain't willin'! I'll be out come day tomorrow!"

The others both stopped and turned in their saddles.

"Glad to hear ye come through, Thomas," called Jameson, "you ride south along th' Rockface. You'll go over Black Coulee way, won't ye, Dan?"

"I will," said Hill.

"Good. I'll go north."

There was a quiet grimness in the few words, for he who rode north on such an errand tempted fate.

Then the three separated, and there was only the silence and the red light of the dying day at the head of Rolling Cove.

That same evening Tharon Last sat in her western doorway and watched the sun go down in majesty over the weathered peaks and ridges of the Canon Country.

Billy Brent lounged on the hard earth beside the step, his fair head shining in the afterglow, his grey eyes upon the girl's face in a sort of idol-worship.

The curve of her cheek, golden with tan and red with the hue of youth, was more to him than all the sunsets the world had ever seen.

A deep light shone in his young eyes which, had the girl been wise, she might have seen. But Tharon was as elemental as the kitten chasing a moth out by the pansy bed, and could look in a man's face with the unconscious eyes of a child.

Now she watched the pageant of the dying day in a rapt delight.

"Billy," she said presently, "I've often wondered if there's another place in all the world as lovely as our Valley. Jim Last told me once that there were places so much bigger out below, that we wouldn't be a patchin' to them. Don't seem like there could be."

She lifted her slim body up along the doorpost and looked long and earnestly all up and down the wonderful stretch of country that lay along the Wall from north to south. She could see the tiny dots that went for the different homesteads, scattered here and there. Up at the head there lay, hard against the frowning hills, the squat, wide blur that was Courtrey's Stronghold. Her lips compressed at sight of it.

"Nope," she said, shaking her head, "I don't believe he meant it. He used to tease me a lot, you know. It's an awful big valley, an' no mistake."

The rider, who had drifted up along the Wall five years before, looked down at the playing kitten and smiled with a lean crinkling of his cheeks.

"It's a sure-enough big place, Tharon," he said gravely, "an' it's lovely as Eden."

"Huh?" said Tharon, "where's that, Billy?"

The boy sobered and looked up into her blue eyes.

"Why, Tharon," he whispered, "that's where th' heart is."

For a moment she regarded him. Then she smiled.

"Billy," she said severely, "you're stringin' your boss. I'm sure goin' to fire you, some day, like I ben a-threatenin'."

"Do--an' hire me over!"

"Nope."

The girl shut her pretty lips and the man's hand crept softly up and touched her wrist where it lay against her knee.

"All right," he said airily, "gimme my time. I quit."

There was an odd note in his voice, as if under the play there was a purpose. For a second Tharon held her breath.

"What you mean, Billy?" she asked so sharply that the boy jumped.

Then he laughed, still in that light fashion.

"What I said," he affirmed doggedly.

But the mistress of Last's took a clutch on his hand that was authority in force and leaned down to look anxiously in his face.

"Why, Billy," she said with a quiver in her voice, "Last's couldn't run without you, boy. An' what's more, I thought all th' riders of th'

Holdin' would stand by th' place."

Billy, fully sobered, straightened up and held hard to that clutching hand. The red light of the sunset flushed his cheeks, but it never set the glow that was in his eyes.

"Don't you know yet, Tharon," he said quietly, "when I'm a-jokin' with you? I'd stand by Last's an' you to my last breath. Don't you know that?"

For a long moment Tharon regarded him gravely.

"Yes, I do," she said, "but somehow I don't like to have you talk that-a-way, Billy. Don't do it no more."

"All right," promised the rider, "if you say so, Boss. Only don't talk about firin' me, then. I'm very sensitive."

And he looked away with smiling eyes to where the deep black shadows fell p.r.o.ne into the Valley from the forbidding face of the great Wall.

Only the towering peaks were alight with crimson and gold, which haloed their bulk in majestic mystery.

Night was coming fast across Lost Valley, while the tree-toads out by the springhouse set up their nightly chorus.

"It's Eden," thought the man, "as sure's th' world, made an' forgot with all its trimmin's--innocence an' sweetness an' plenty, an' th'

silence of perfect peace, not to overlook th' last unnecessary evil, th' livin' presence of his majesty, th' devil."

Then the light died wholly and there came the disturbing sound of boots on the ringing stones. The rest of the riders were coming in to claim their share of Billy's Eden.

CHAPTER IV

UNBROKEN BREAD