s
ashes with sudden rage.

"Now," she said, "I'll tell him."

"Do," said Courtrey, and swung away around the wall of the house.

There were no more artless songs that day at Last's Holding. Anita was
awake and peering with dim eyes when Tharon came in from the door
sill.

"_Mi querida_," she asked, "what happened?"

"Nothing," said the girl, "it's time to begin supper. Th' boys'll soon
be comin' in."

"_Si, si_," said Anita, "I'll ask Jose to cut the fresh beef--it has
hung long enough in the cooling house."

Supper at Last's was a lively affair. At the long tables in the
eating room the riders gathered, lean, tanned men, young mostly, all
alert, quick-eyed, swift in judgment. Their days were full and earnest
enough, running Last's cattle on the Lost Valley ranges. The evenings
were their own, and they made the most of them. The big house was free
to them, and they made it home, smoking, playing cards on the living
room table under the hanging lamp, mulling over the work of the day,
and begging Tharon to sing to them, sometimes with the instrument,
sometimes sitting in the deep east window, when the moon shone, and
then they turned out the light and listened in adoring rapture.

For Last's girl was the rose of the Valley, the one absolutely
unattainable woman, and they worshipped her accordingly.

Not that she was aloof. Far from it. In her deep heart the whole bunch
of boys had a place; singly and collectively. They were her private
property, and she would have been inordinately jealous of any one of
them had he slipped allegiance.

As the purple and crimson veils began to drape the eastern ramparts
where the forests thickened and swept up the slopes, these riders
began to come in across the range, driving the herds before them.
Running cattle in Lost Valley was no child's play. Any small bunch of
cows left out at night was not there by dawn. Eternal vigilance was
the price of safety, and then they were not always safe. Witness poor
Harkness, a year ago shot in the back and left to die alone--his band
run off in daylight.

They had found him too late, pitifully propped against a stone, the
cigarette, he had tried to light to comfort him, dead in his nerveless
hand. Tharon had wept and wept for Harkness, for he had been a good
comrade, open-hearted and merry. And deep in her soul she harboured
dim longings for justice on his murderer--revenge, if you will.

Tonight she thought of him, somehow, as she wen