eeded
something more than she had always had.

"Which way did Dad go, Billy?" she asked, "north or south?"

"North," said Billy, "he rode th' Cup Rim range today."

When the meal, a trifle silent in deference to Tharon's silence, was
done, the men rose awkwardly. They stood a moment, looking about,
undecided.

Conford picked them up with his eyes and nodded out. He felt that just
maybe the girl would rather be alone. But Tharon stopped the
reluctant egress.

"Don't go, boys," she said, "come on in th' room. There's no moon
tonight." But she did not play on the melodeon. Instead she sat in the
deep window that looked over the rolling uplands and was quiet,
listening.

"Turn out th' light, Bent," she said, "somehow I feel like shadows
tonight."

So they sat about in the great room, black with the darkness of the
soft spring night, and like the true worshippers they were, they did
not speak. Only the red butts of their cigarettes glowed and faded, to
glow again and again fade out. Tharon sat curled in the window, her
graceful limbs drawn up to her chin, her eyes half closed, her keen
ears open like a forest creature's. She was listening for the marked
rhythm of the great El Rey, the clap-clap, clap-clap of the king of
Last's Holding as he singlefooted down the hollow slopes of the
lifting eastern range.

And as she waited she thought of many things. Odd little happenings of
her childhood came back to her--the time she had caught her father
killing the winter's beef, had wept in hysterical pity and forbidden
him to finish.

They had had no meat those long months following--and she had so tired
of beans, that she had never been able to eat them since. She smiled
in the dusk as she recalled Jim Last's life-long indulgence of her.

And the time she had wanted to make her own knee-short dresses as long
as Anita's, to sweep the floors, with fringe upon them and stripes of
bright print.

She had worn them so--at twelve--until she found that they hindered
the free use of her young limbs in mounting a horse, free-foot and
bareback. Then, once again the memory of her father's face when she
questioned him concerning her mother.

"Boys," she said suddenly, smiling to herself, "did you ever know a
man like my dad?"

There was a movement among the lounging riders, a shifting of
position, a striking of cigarette ash.

"No, sir," said Billy promptly, "there hain't another man's good with
a gun as him, not anywhere's i