"Do I seem different to you?" asked Kenset quickly. "How?"

"Yes. I don't know how. You seem soft, like a woman--some women--an'

I'm afraid----"

She stopped suddenly, abruptly halted in her nave speech, as if she had come face to face with something she had not meant to meet.

"Afraid?" probed the man gravely, "go on. You are afraid--of what?"

"No," said Tharon, "I won't say it"

"Please do. I want to know."

"Then," answered the girl straightly, after the honest and downright fashion of all her dealings, "I'm afraid you are--are too soft. You don't pack a gun. I'm afraid you wouldn't use it if you did."

There was a certain finality about the short speech, as if she had put the last word of condemnation to his estate.

Kenset looked down at his hands, spread them out a bit.

"You're right," he said shortly, though his voice was still gentle. "I don't. And I wouldn't. Not until the last extremity."

"An' what would that be?" she asked.

"I don't just know, Miss Last," he answered smiling and raising his eyes once more to hers, "it would have to be--the _last_ extremity, I know.

"The hands of all my forbears have been clean, so far as I know. I have a deep horror of that imaginary stain which human blood seems to leave on the hands of the killer. Blood guilt."

"You call it that? My daddy had his killin's, but they were all in fair-an'-open. _I_ called him a _man_."

There was a ringing quality in her voice, a depth and resonance that spoke of war and heroes. The fire that all the Holding knew was suddenly in her eyes, flashing and flaming. Kenset caught it, and a thrill shot through him.

"Granted," he said quickly. "But is there only _one_ type of man?"

"For me," said Tharon, "yes."

"I'm sorry," said he, and for the life of him he did not know why.

"So'm I," said Tharon honestly.

They looked at each other for a pregnant moment, while a silence fell on the cabin and they could hear the singing water running down the slopes.

Then the girl stooped and rearranged the cushion in the big chair, laid a book more neatly on top of another at the table's edge.

"Th' time is up," she said, "I must be goin'."

She straightened her shoulders and looked at him again.

"I thank you for th' meal," she said, "an' some day I'll return it--in some manner. I don't know yet just what you're here for, nor if you're Courtrey's man or not--------"

"Good Lord!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Kenset, but she went on.

"I won't shake hands with you, for whilst I ain't done no killin' yet, I'm sworn--an' Jim Last's hands was red--they would be to such as you--an' down to th' last drop o' blood, th' last beat o' my heart, I'm Jim Last's girl--th' best gun man in Lost Valley, if I do say so."

And she swung quickly to the door.

Kenset followed her. He longed for words, but found none.

There was a sudden tragic seeming in the very air, a change from the pleasant commonplace to the tense and unexpected. It was always so in these strange meetings with the people of Lost Valley, it seemed, as if he was never to find his way among them, the sane and quiet course that he must travel.

As they reached the step at the door sill El Rey stamped and whinnied a shrill blast. In through the gateway between the pines there came a rider on a running horse, Billy on Golden who ploughed to a stop before them, his grey eyes troubled.

"h.e.l.lo, Billy," said Tharon. "How's this?"

"Been lookin' for you," said the boy. "We saw Courtrey an' his ruffians ridin' up east--watched 'em with th' gla.s.s, an' Anita said you rode south. Thought you might have met 'em."

"I didn't meet 'em, so to speak," she said, smiling, "though if I'd been on anythin' but El Rey I would. They tried to drive me into Black Coulee."

"h.e.l.l!" said Billy softly.

Then the Mistress of Last's remembered her manners.

"Billy," she said, "I make you acquainted with Kenset of th'

foothills. I rode in here just in time to shake th' Stronghold bunch."

The two men spoke, reached to shake each other's hands, and took a long survey that was mutual. As the two pairs of eyes met, a wall seemed to rear itself between them, a mist, a curtain, something intangible, but there.

They looked across the woman's shoulder, and from that moment she was to stand between, though what there could be in common between the man in the U. S. service and the common rider from Last's was not apparent. El Rey was eager for flight and by the time Tharon's foot was in the stirrup he was up on his hind feet, fore feet beating the air, silver mane like a flying cloud. The girl rose with him gracefully, threw her leg across the saddle, waved a hand to Kenset in the door, and in another moment they were gone away down the gra.s.sy slope, out through the opening, had stretched away along the oak-dotted plain, swung toward the north, and were out of sight.

The forest man turned away from the doorway, stood a moment looking over the cabin where the late light was making golden patterns on the green and brown rug, sighed and reached for his pipe.

Somehow all the spirit seem to have gone from the summer day. The long twilight was setting in.

"She wouldn't shake hands," he muttered to himself, "and what she said was true as death. She's _sworn_--and it is a solemn oath to her. G.o.d help the man who killed her daddy!"

Then once more he sighed, unconsciously.

"And Lord G.o.d help her!" he finished very gravely, "she is so sweet--so wild and spirited and sweet."

Tharon and Billy let the horses run. Golden was a racer himself, though he could not hold a candle to the silver king, and the two young creatures atop were free as the summer winds, as buoyant and filled with joy of being. So they shot down along the levels, Tharon holding El Rey up a bit, though it was a man-size job to do so, and Billy's rein swinging loose on Golden's neck. They pa.s.sed the last of the scattered oaks, came out to the green stretches. The sun was swinging like a copper ball above the Wall at the west. Down through the canons the light came in long red shafts that cut through the cobalt shadows like sharp lances of fire and reached half across Lost Valley. All the western part of the Valley lay in that blue-black shadow. They could see Corvan set like a dull gem in the wide green country, the scattered ranches, miles apart.

They swung down to the west a bit, for Tharon said she wanted to go by the Gold Pool and see how it was holding out.

"Fine," said Billy, "she's deep as she ever was at this time of year, an' cold as snow."

Where one tall cottonwood stood like a sentinel in the widespread landscape they drew rein and dismounted. Here a huge boulder cropped from the plain and under its protecting bulk there lay as lovely a spring as one would care to see, deep and golden as its name implied, above its swirling sands, for the waters were in constant turmoil as they pressed up from below.

The girl lay flat at its edge and with her face to the crystal surface, drank long and deeply.

As she looked up with a smile, Billy Brent felt the heart in him contract with a sudden ache.