thirty men who
had signed her paper, riding far and by in the sounding basin,
returning to their uncertain homes. She thought of her father asleep
under his peaceful cross, of young Harkness beside him.

She thought of Courtrey and Service and Wylackie Bob, of Black Bart
and the stranger from Arizona. They were a hard bunch to tackle.

They had the Valley under their thumbs to do with as they pleased,
like the veriest Roman potentate of old. Her daddy had told her once,
when she was small and lonely of winter nights, strange old tales of
rulers and their helpless subjects. Jim Last could talk when he
needed, though he was a man of conserved speech.

Yes, Courtrey was like a king in Lost Valley, absolute. She thought of
the many crimes done and laid to his door since she could remember, of
countless cattle run off, of horses stolen and shamelessly ridden in
grinning defiance of any who might dare to identify them, of Cap Hart
killed on the Stronghold's range and left to rot under the open skies,
a warning like those birds of prey that are shot and hung to scare
their kind. Her soft lips drew themselves into a hard line, very like
Jim Last's, and the heart in her ratified its treaty with the thirty
men.

She had none to mourn her, she thought a trifle sadly--well Anita and
Paula, of course, and there were her riders. Billy would grieve--he'd
kill some one if she were killed--and Conford and Jack.

A warm glow pervaded her being. Yes, she had folks, even if she was
the last of her blood.

But she didn't intend to be killed. She was right, and she had
listened enough to Anita to believe with a superstitious certainty,
that right was invulnerable. For instance, if she and Courtrey should
draw at the same second, she believed absolutely, that because she was
in the right, her bullet would travel a bit the swifter, her aim be
truer. She felt in her heart with a profound conviction that some day
she would kill Courtrey. She thought of his wife, Ellen, a pale flower
of a woman, white as milk, with hair the colour of unripe maize, and
wondered if she loved the man who made her life hell, so the Valley
whispered. Tharon wondered how it would seem to love a man, as women
who were wives must love their men--if the agony of loss to Ellen
could be as acute and terrifying as hers had been ever since that soft
night in spring when her best friend, Jim Last, had come home on El
Rey.

She thought of the grey look on his face, of