Presently Jim Last sighed and opened his eyes. They sought hers and he smiled, a tender lighting from within. He fumbled for the buckle of his gun-belt. The girl unclasped it and pulled it free. She noticed that both guns were in their holsters.

"Put it on," whispered the master of Last's Holding.

Without a question Tharon stood up and buckled the belt about her slender waist.

Her father raising himself with difficulty on an elbow, wet his lips.

"Tharon, my girl," he said, "show your dad th' backhand flip."

Strange play, this, when every second counted, but Last's daughter obeyed him to the letter.

She stepped clear by the table, stood at attention a second, and, with a peculiar outward whirl, lightning-quick, of her two wrists, had him covered with the big blue guns.

He nodded.

"Good as I learned ye," he whispered, "make it better."

"I will," promised Tharon swiftly.

The man closed his eyes, swayed, recovered as Conford caught him, and brightened again.

"Now th' under-sling."

Again she obeyed, replacing the weapons, standing that second at attention, and flipping them from the holsters so quickly that the eye could scarcely catch the motion. Both draws were peculiar--and peculiarly Last's own. "Good girl," he said with a husk grown suddenly in his voice, "take--three hours--a day.

I want t' leave you th' best gun-handler in Lost Valley--because, my girl--you'll--have--to--to--pro----"

He ceased, wilting forward in Conford's arms.

Then he opened his eyes again for one last smile at the daughter he had loved above all things on earth, save and except the memory of the woman who had given her to him.

For once in her life Tharon did not wait his finished speech. She saw the Hand reach out of the shadows and flung herself upon his breast where the blood still seeped and fairly forced the last flutter of life to brighten in him. She kissed his rugged cheek.

"Who, Dad," she called into his dulling senses, "tell me who? I'll get him, so help me G.o.d!" and she loosed one hand to cross herself, as old Anita had taught her.

But the promise was late. None knew whether or not Jim Last heard it, for before the last word was done the breath had ceased in his throat.

Another twilight came down upon Lost Valley. The wide ranges lay dim and mysterious, grey and pink and lavendar, as if the hand of a Master Painter had coloured them, as indeed it had. The Rockface at the west was black with shadow for all its rugged miles, the eastern uplands were bathed and aglow with purplish crimson light.

In Corvan lights twinkled all up and down the one main street. Horses were tied at the hitch-racks and among them were the Ironwoods from Courtrey's Stronghold, beautiful big creatures, blood-bay, black-pointed, noticeable in any bunch. There were no Finger Marks, however, the blue roans, red roans and buckskins with the four black stripes on the outside of the knee, as if one had slapped them with a tarred hand, which hailed from Last's. There were horses from all up and down the Valley. Cow ponies and half-breeds of the Ironwood stock which Courtrey would not keep at the Stronghold but was too close to kill, shouldered pintos from the Indian settlements, big, half-wild horses from over the mountains at the North. Inside the brightly lighted saloons men pa.s.sed back and forth, drank neat liquor at the worn bars, played at the green felt and canvas covered tables. At one, The Golden Cloud, more pretentious than the rest, there foregathered the leading spirits of the Valley. Here Courtrey came and played and drank, his henchmen with him. He was in high mettle this night. Always a contained man, slow to laughter and to speech, he seemed to have unbent more than usual, to respond to the human nature about him. He was not playing steadily as was his wont. He took a turn at poker with three men from the south of the Valley where the river ran out of the Bottle Neck, won a hand or two, threw down the cards and swung away to talk a moment with this one, listen a moment where those two spoke of hushed matters.

Always when he came near he was accorded deference. There was nothing sacred from Courtrey of the Stronghold, seated like a feudal place at the north head of Lost Valley, no conversation so private that he could not come in on it if he chose.

For Courtrey was the king of the country, undisputed sovereign, the best gun man north of the Rio Grand and south of the Line, if one excepted Jim Last. With him tonight were Black Bart, tall, swarthy, gimlet-eyed, a helf-breed Mexican, and Wylackie Bob his right-hand man. Without these two he seldom moved. They were both able lieutenants, experts with firearms. A formidable trio, the three went where and when they listed, and few disputed their right-of-way.

Courtrey, a smile in his dark eyes, the wide black hat at an angle on his iron-grey hair, leaned against the high bar and scanned the crowded room where the riders played and laughed and swore with abandon.

"Heard anything more about Canon Jim?" he asked Bullard, the proprietor of The Golden Cloud, "ain't come in yet?"

Bullard shook his head.

"No--nor he won't, according to my notion. Think he mistook th' False Ridge drop. Ain't no man could make it up again without th' hammer spike an' rope."

"H'm--don't know. Don't know," mused Courtrey. "I've always thought it could be done. There ought to be a way on th' other side, seems like."

"Well, _ought_ an' _is_ is two diff'rent things, Buck," grinned Bullard.

"Sure," nodded the king, "sure. An' yet--"

"h.e.l.lo, Buck."

A soft hand touched Courtrey's shoulder with a subtle caress. He wheeled on the instant, ready, alert. Then he smiled and reaching up, took the hand and held it openly.

"h.e.l.lo, Lola," he said, "how goes it?"

The newcomer was a woman, full, rounded, dark, and she was past-master of men--as witness the slow glance that she turned interestedly out over the teeming room, even while the pulse in the wrist in Courtrey's clasp leaped like a racer. She was a perfect specimen of a certain type, beautiful after a resplendent fashion, full of eye and lip, confident, calm. She was brilliantly clad in crimson and black, and rings of value shone on her ivory-like hands.

Lola of the Golden Cloud was known all over Lost Valley. Men who had no women worshipped her--and some who had, also. At the Stronghold at the Valley's head there was a woman who hated her, though she had never set eyes on her--Courtrey's wife.

If Lola knew this she had never mentioned it, wise creature that she was. Proud of her beauty and her power she had reigned at The Golden Cloud in supreme indifference, even to her men themselves, it seemed, though hidden undercurrents ran strong in her. Which way they tended many a reckless buck of Lost Valley would have given much to know, among them Courtrey himself.

Now she pulled her hand away from him and sauntered over to a table where five men sat playing, laid it upon the shoulder of one of them, leaned down and looked at the cards in his hand.

The man, a tall stripling in a silver-studded belt, looked up, flattered.

Courtrey by the bar watched her, still smiling. Then he turned back to Bullard and went on with his conversation.

Over by the wall a man on a raised dais began to tune an ancient fiddle.

Two more women came in from somewhere at the back, a big blooming girl by the name of Sadie, and a small red-head, tragically faded, with soft brown eyes that should never have looked upon Bullard's. Two men rose and took them as the tune, an old-fashioned waltz, began to ripple under the fingers of the fiddler, who was a born musician, and the four swung down between the tables and the bar. The Golden Cloud was in full swing, running free for the night, though the soft twilight was scarcely faded from the beautiful country without.

Slip--step, slip--step--went the dancing feet to the accompaniment of rattling spurs. These men were lithe and active, able to dance with amazing grace in chaps and the full accoutrement of the rider. They even wore their broad brimmed hats.

Why should they not, since none objected?

Bullard, solid, stocky, red-faced, leaned on his bar and watched the busy room with pleased eyes.

He did not hear a voice which called his name, once or twice, among the jumble of sounds. Presently an odd figure came round the end of the bar from a door that opened there into the mysterious back regions of the place and elbowed in to face him.

This was a little old man, weazened and bent, his unkempt head thrust forward from hunched shoulders. He dragged two grain sacks behind him, and he was so grotesquely bow-legged that the first sight of him always provoked laughter. This was old Pete the snow-packer, bound on his nightly trip to the hills. Outside his burros waited, their pack-saddles empty.

By dawn they would come down from the world's rim, the grain sacks bulging with hard-packed snow for the cooling of Bullard's liquor.

"d.i.c.k," he said when he faced his employer, "here 'tis time t' start an' there ain't a d.a.m.ned bit o' grub put up fer me! Ef ye don't make that pig-tailed c.h.i.n.k pay 'tention t' my wants, I quit! I quit, I tell ye!"

And he emphasized his vehement protest by whirling the bags over his head and flailing them upon the floor.

A roar of laughter greeted him, which brought dim tears of indignation to his old eyes.

"Ye don't care a d.a.m.n!" he whimpered in impotent rage. "Jes' 'cause it's me. Ef 'twas yer ol' c.h.i.n.k, now--if 'twas him, th' ol'

he-pigtail, ye'd----"