out.

But a strange quietness seemed to settle down upon them. That for
which they waited did not materialize. Courtrey and his gun men rode
into Corvan and up and down the Valley on mysterious missions which
were as unsettling as open depredations, but nothing happened. In
fact, Courtrey, burning with the new desire that was beginning to
obsess him, was working out a new design.

He began to draw away from Lola. His triweekly visits to the Golden
Cloud dropped off a bit. He took to drifting about from saloon to
saloon, to being less pronounced in his frequenting of one or two
places.

His cold eyes, however, set in their narrow slits beneath the heavy
brows, picked out every settler that he met and promised vague things
for the future. He knew to a man who had ridden up from Last's that
day, and he meant that not one should escape full payment--some time.
Now he thought of the girl who had defied him and he waited with
leaping pulse. The memory of that kiss, taken by violence at her
western door, was with him night and day. She stood for right and the
dignity of order. He meant, for a time, to play her hand.

Therefore the settlers waited, and held their breath while they did
so.

And Courtrey took to riding much more alone, to watching the slopes
and stretches with a hand at his hat-brim, shading his keen eyes. He
looked far and wide in the golden summer land for the sight of a
silver horse cutting down the wind with a slim girl in saddle.

But Tharon was busy at the Holding and El Rey stamped and whistled in
his paddock. The mistress knew that she had set stern tides flowing in
the Valley, that sooner or later they were due to sweep away the peace
and quiet that pervaded the cottonwoods and the singing springs. She
knew that Courtrey waited, but she made the most of that waiting.

Conford and Billy and the rest of the riders made strong bolts for all
the doors of the house, reinforced the fences that held the herds at
night, put trick locks on all the gates.

But the time came when the close retreat became irksome to the girl,
and she went from room to room in an uneasiness that was foreign to
her calm and happy nature. She read over and over the two or three old
books that had been at the Holding since she could remember, made new
covers for the tables in the living room, kept the hands of the Virgin
full of fresh offerings. But these things staled.

She began to long for the distances, the open spaces,