"John Dement," she quietly said, "I want you to go home an' bar your house for fight. Fix up your fences, unpack your duffle. In the morning my riders will drive down to your place a hundred head o'

cattle. You put your brand on em. There's goin' to be no one-man doin's in Lost Valley yet awhile--not while Jim Last's daughter lives. See," she dropped his hand and pointed to the east where the tall pine lifted to the stars, "out yonder there's a cross at Jim Last's grave--an' there's my mark on it. Th' settlers have a leader still--an' I name myself that leader. I'm set against Courtrey, now an' forever. I mean to fight him t' th' last inch o' ground in Lost Valley, th' last word o' law, th' last drop o' blood, both his an'

mine. You go down among 'em--th' settlers--an' take 'em that word from me. Tell 'em Jim Last's daughter stands facin' Courtrey, an' she'll need at her back t' fight him every man in Lost Valley that ain't a coward."

When the settler had gone, incoherent and half-incredulous, Conford drew a long breath and looked at his mistress in the dusk.

"Tharon, dear," he said so gently that his words were like a caress "you're jest a-breakin' your riders' hearts. You're heapin' anxiety on us mountain-high. Now what on earth'll we do?"

Young Billy Brent pushed near and slapped a hand against a doubled fist. His eyes were sparkling like harbour lights, his voice was like the sound of running fire.

"Do?" he cried. "Do? We'll stand behind her so tight they can't see daylight through, an' we'll fight with an' for her every inch o' that way, every word o' that law, every drop o' that blood! Who says Last's ain't on th' map in Lost Valley?" Tharon smiled and touched him again.

"Billy," she said softly, "you're after my own heart. Now get to bed.

I want t' think."

CHAPTER III

THE MAN IN UNIFORM

Spring was warming swiftly into summer. Where the gently sloping ranges went up in waves and swells toward the uplands at the east, the bright new green had turned to a darker shade. The tiny purple and white flowers had disappeared to give place to st.u.r.dier ones of crimson and gold. The veil of water that fell sharply down the face of the Wall for a thousand feet at the Valley's southern end had thinned to sheerest gauze. In the Canon Country the snow had disappeared from most of the high points. Red, black, yellow, the great face of the encircling Wall stood in everlasting majesty, looking down upon the level cup of Lost Valley. The unspeakable upheaval of peaks and crags, of canons and splits and unfathomable depths, was almost a sealed book to the denizens of the Valley. There were those who knew False Ridge.

There were those who said they knew more. Many a man had adventured therein, and few had returned to tell of their adventures. Canon Jim had not returned. Not that he was a loss to the community, or that they mourned him, but his absence pointed again to the formidable secretive power of the Canon Country.

Tharon Last, standing in her western door, could look across the Valley's deceptive miles and see the huge black seams and fissures that rent the grim face. These splits and canons were peculiar in that none came down to the Valley's floor, their yawning doorways being, in every instance, set from two hundred to five hundred feet up the Wall.

Often the girl watched them in the changing lights and her active mind formed many a conjecture concerning them.

"Some day," she told young Paula, "I'll go into the Canon Country and see it for myself."

"Saints forbid, Senorita!" said Paula, who had no love for the mysterious, and who was more Mexic than p.o.r.no, "there are demons and devils there!"

"Yes, I doubt not, Paula," said Tharon grimly. "They say Courtrey knows th' Canons, an' when he's there, it's peopled, an' no mistake!

"But it must be beautiful--beautiful! Why--there's a thousand feet of creva.s.se on every hand, I know, steps an' benches an' weathered faces that no man can climb. They say there's bright waters that tumble down like th' Vestal's Veil and sink into holes without an outlet.

Just go away in the rock. There's strange flowers an' stunted trees.

An' they tell of th' Cup of G.o.d, a hidden glade so beautiful that th'

eye of man has never seen its like. All my life it's called me, th'

Canon Country.

"Don't you believe, Paula, that there's somethin' there for me? Some reason why I know I must some day go into its heart an' give myself up to it for a time? If I was free," she finished with a sigh, "if I was my own woman, wholly, I'd go soon. There's rest an' peace up there, I know--and a place to think of Jim Last without such bitterness that my heart turns t' gall."

She shook her bright head against the doorpost and shut her soft lips into a straight line.

"Nope," she finished sadly, "I ain't my own woman yet."

"Tharon," said Billy Brent this day, clanking around the corner of the adobe house, his leather chaps flapping with every step, his yellow hair curling boyishly under his hat-brim. "Tharon, I got bad news for you."

There was genuine distress in his grey eyes.

"Yes?" asked the mistress of Last's, straightening up.

"Yes, sir, an' I hate like h.e.l.l t' tell it."

"Out with it, Billy. What's wrong?"

"Somebody's dynamited th' Crystal Spring in th' Cup Rim."

"_What?_"

The word was in italics. Its one syllable told all one might care to know of the importance of Billy's news.

"Yes. Opened her up fer two square yards. Spread th' lovely old Crystal all over th' range. An' she's gone, as sure's shootin'.

Nothin' but a lot o' wet an' dryin' mud to show for her."

Tharon drew a long breath.

"Courtrey's beginnin'," she said. "He's heard th' word I sent th'

settlers. He's goin' t' use th' tactics now with Last's that he's used with every poor devil he wanted to run out of th' Valley, th' tactics he da.r.s.ent use while Jim Last lived. Well--go send Conford to me, Billy."

The girl sat down in the doorway and gazed sombrely out over the summer land.

When her foreman came and stood before her, a slim, efficient figure, dark-faced and quiet, she had already made up her mind.

"Burt," she said swiftly, "drive th' cattle down from th' Cup Rim right away. We'll run those two bunches under Blue Pine an' Nick Bob out toward th' Black Coulee. Tell 'em t' keep close t' th' others. I trust th' Indians, but there ain't no Indian livin' can meet Courtrey's white renegades in courage an' wits. Then we'll start right in an' dig a well th' first well ever dug on th' open range in this man's land."

"Good Lord, Tharon!" said Conford, "A well!"

"Yes. Th' livin' water holes have been th' pride of th' Valley, I know, but we'll fix this well of ours so's even Courtrey will respect it."

There was a grim note in the golden voice.

"How?" asked Conford uneasily.

"Dig it first," said Tharon, "then I'll tell you."

What the mistress said, went. Therefore, the next morning saw a disgusted bunch of cowboys and Indian _vaqueros_ setting to with a will at a spot much nearer the Holding than the Crystal had been, and it took a much shorter time to reach water in a good gravel bed than any one had dreamed.

In three days the thing was done and Conford presented himself, smiling.

"Now, Miss Secrecy," he said, "come on with th' mystery."

Tharon went in to the big desk which Jim Last had used and which was now her own, and returned with a square white slab of pine, elaborately smoothed and finished by Jose.