,
for all the world as if the thing had been cut and dried at some
secret conclave.

Courtrey was playing his game with a daring hand, true to his name and
habit.

Dusk was falling in Lost Valley. The long blue shadows had swept out
from the Rockface, covering first the homesteads under the Wall, then
the great grazing stretches, then Corvan, then the open levels again,
then the mouth of Black Coulee and lastly sweeping eastward to hush
the life at Last's Holding in that soft, sweet quiet which comes with
the day's work done.

Out at the corrals Billy and Conford, Jack and Bent and Curly, put the
finishing touches to the routine of precaution which the Holding never
relaxed, day or night.

Inside the dusky living room where the bright blankets glowed on the
walls and the _ollas_ hung in the deep window places, Tharon Last sat
at the little old melodeon and played her nameless tunes. She did not
look at the yellowed keys. Instead her blue eyes, deep and glowing,
wandered down along the southern slopes and she was lost in
unconscious dreams. Once again she saw the trim figure of the forest
man as she had seen him come stiffly into her range of vision that day
in Corvan. She recalled his quiet eyes, dark and speaking, the odd way
his hair went straight back from his forehead. She wondered why she
should think of him at all.

He was against her--was a force that played directly against all her
plans of life, her precepts. Moreover, she had told him she feared he
was soft--like a woman--some women--that there was in him a lack of
the straight man-courage which was the only standard in Lost Valley.

And yet--she waited on his word, somehow--held her hand from her sworn
duty for a while, waiting--for what?

Ah, she knew! Deep in the soul of her she knew, vaguely and dimly to
be sure, but she knew that it was for the time when the die should be
cast--that he might prove himself for what he was.

For some vague reason she knew she would not kill Courtrey until this
man stood by.

She wondered what Courtrey meant by this strange quiet following the
tragic moment at the Stronghold steps when the Vigilantes had
challenged him and ridden away.

And then, all suddenly, into her dreaming there came the sound of a
horse's hoofs on the sounding-board without--slow hoofs, uncertain.
For one swift second that sound, coming out of the dusk with its
uncertainty, sent a chill of memory down her nerves. So had come El
Rey that