"You, too, _grande caballo_," she said, "there is naught but grief at Last's Holding. _Tharone querida_" she called into the house, "come here."

Tharon came and stood in the kitchen door.

"What, Anita?" she asked gently.

"El Rey," answered the old woman, "he calls and calls and none come to him. He, too, needs help, _Corazon_. Why not take him for a run along the plain? It will help you both."

For a long time the girl stood, considering.

"I have not cared to ride lately, Anita," she said, "but you are right. El Rey should not be left to fret."

She stepped back in the house, then came out, and she had added nothing to her attire save her daddy's belt and guns. Without these she never left the Holding now.

Bareheaded, slender, she was a thing of beauty, and there was a quiet command about her which subdued the great El Rey himself, the proudest horse in all the Valley, outside of Courtrey's Ironwoods, Bolt and Arrow.

Between these three horses there was much comment and discussion, though they had never been tested out together.

She found a bridle on a corral post, a strong affair of rawhide, heavily ornamented with silver, its bit a Spanish spade. Without this she could not hold the stallion, and he was no pet to come at her caressing call of the double notes.

Only Jim Last himself had ever tamed El Rey to do his bidding by word of mouth. The horse had had one master. He would never have another.

Even now, when Tharon bridled him and opened the big gate, promising him his long-desired flight, he seemed not to see her, his beautiful big eyes looked through, beyond her, as if he sought another. There was some one for whom he waited, listened.

From a block of wood set in the yard the girl gathered the rein tight in her hand, balanced a moment, and leaped up astride the shining back.

With a snort like a pistol shot El Rey flung up his great head, leaped into the air and was gone. Around the corner of the adobe house he went, out across the trampled yard, and away along the open to the south, running level and free. With the first sink-and-lift Tharon had slipped back a full span. Now she wound her fingers in the white cloud of mane that flailed her face and edged up, inch by inch. When her knees were well up on the huge shoulders that worked beneath them powerfully, she gathered the reins, one in each hand, leaned down along the outstretched neck and let the great king run. The wind sang by her ears in a rising whine, the green prairie was a flowing sea beneath her, the thunder of the pounding hoofs was stupendous music.

Tharon shut her eyes and rode, and for the first time since Jim Last's death a sense of joy rose in her like a tide.

She had ridden El Rey before, many times. She had felt him sail beneath her down the open prairies and always it was so, as if the earth slid by, as if the note of the wind lifted minute by minute. She had wondered often about this--how long it would continue to rise with El Rey's rising speed, how long before he would reach a maximum above which he could not go, a place where the singing note would remain fixed.

She had never known him reach that point. Always he could go faster.

Always he had reserves.

Far out ahead she saw a bunch of cattle feeding. They were lazily circling in a wide arc, content under the beaming sun. Near them sat a rider on a buckskin horse, Bent Smith on Golden. This Golden was one of the prides of Last's Holding. Bigger than Drumfire or Redbuck, he ranked next to El Rey himself in speed, for his slim legs, slapped smartly with the distinguishing finger marks on the outside of the knee, were long and shapely, his back short-coupled and strong, his withers low, his narrow hips high. Tharon bore hard on El Rey's bit, leaned her body to the left, and they swung in toward Bent and Golden in a beautiful sweeping curve that brought the cowboy up in his stirrups with his hat a-wave above him.

"Good girl!" he yelled with leaping gladness as the superb pair shot by. "Good girl! Go to it!"

Tharon loosed a hand long enough to wave back and was gone, on down the sloping land toward the country of the Black Coulee, her dark skirts fluttering at her knees, the two heavy guns pounding her thighs at every jump.

It was a long time before El Rey came down from his sweeping flight.

He had been too long holden in cramping bars. The free winds and the rolling earth filled him with a sort of madness. He ran with joy and the surety of unbounded power.

The rider, left far behind, watched them anxiously for a time, thought of following, glanced at his cattle, remembered the gun man's heritage and turned to his business.

The sun was well down over the western Rockface when Tharon and El Rey came back to Last's Holding. The riders were bringing in the cattle, dust was rising in clouds above the moving ma.s.ses. From the ranch house came the savory smells of cooking.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEAR THEM SAT A RIDER ON A BUCKSKIN HORSE]

The stallion was limber as a willow. He tossed his handsome head and his eyes were bright as stars set in his silver face. Life was at high tide in him, flowing magnificently. Tharon, her cheeks whipped into pulsing colour by the wind and the bounding speed, her tawny mane loosed from its bands and flying in a cloud behind her, smoothed back from her face, looked wild as an Indian. As she drew up and sat watching the work of the evening, she smiled for the first time in many days, and Jack Masters, pa.s.sing, felt his heart leap with gladness.

When the mistress of Last's was sad, so were her people.

When the last big corral gate had swung to and the boys turned in to unsaddle, she touched El Rey with a toe and went over among them.

"Line up the horses, boys," she said, "I want to see them all together once more. Somethin' came back in me today--somethin' I been missing for a long time. I'll be myself again."

Billy turned Redbuck to face her, dropped his rein. Curly rode up on Drumfire. These two were red roans, dead matches. Bent brought Golden and stood him alongside. From far at the back of the corral they called Conford and Jack, who came wondering, the former on Sweetheart, true sister of El Rey, almost as big, almost as fast, almost as beautiful.

Silver-blue roan, silver-pointed, slim, graceful, springy, she had not a single dark spot on her except the sharp black bars of the finger marks outside her knees.

"You darlin'!" said Tharon as she wheeled in line.

Then came Jack on Westwind, and he was another buckskin, paler than Golden, most marvelously pointed in pure chestnut brown. His finger marks were brown instead of black--the only horse at the Holding so distinguished, for no matter of what shade or colour, in all the others these peculiar marks were jet black. Five splendid creatures they stood and pounded the ringing earth, tossed their heads and waited, though they had all been far that day and it was feeding time.

Out in the horse corrals there were many more of their breed, slim, wiry horses, toughened and hardened by long hours and daily work, but these were the flower of Last's, the prized favourites.

For a long time Tharon sat and watched them, noting their perfect condition, their glistening skins, their shining hoofs, many of which were striped, another characteristic.

"I don't believe," she said at last, "that there's a bunch of horses in Lost Valley to come nigh 'em. Ironwoods or anything else--I'd back th' Finger Marks."

"So would we," said Conford quietly, "though we've seen th' Ironwoods run--a little."

"That's th' word, Burt," said Curly, "a little. Who of us has ever seen Courtrey let Bolt run like he wanted to? Not a darned one. I've seen that big bay devil pull till th' blood dripped from his mouth."

"Sure," put in Masters, "I've seen that, too--but I was lyin' up on th' Cup Rim oncet, watchin' a couple mavericks fer funny work, an'

Courtrey an' Wylackie Bob come along down that way on Bolt an'

Arrow--an' they wasn't a-holdin' them then. Lord, Lord, how they was goin'! Two long red streaks as level as your hand, an' I swear my heart came up in my throat to see 'em, an' I almost hollered. It was pretty work--pretty work, an' no mistake."

Tharon looked over at him.

"Fast as El Rey, Jack?"

"Who could tell?" said the man. "I know it was some speed, an' that is all."

The girl struck a hand on the king's shoulder so pa.s.sionately that he jumped and snorted.

"Some day," she said tensely, "El Rey will run th' Ironwoods off their feet--an' I'll run th' heart out of their master, d.a.m.n him! Put th'

horses out. It's supper time."

She threw her right limb over the stallion's neck swiftly and with lithe grace, and slid abruptly to the ground.

As she did so there came the sound of hoofs on the hard earth at the corner of the house, and a stranger came sharply into sight.

He drew up and nodded. Conford, just turning away, turned quickly back and came forward.

"Howdy," he said.