night in spring when he brought Jim Last home to die!

She rose swiftly and silently and stepped to the western door.

There, in the shadows and the softness of coming night, a horse loomed
along the green stretch, came plodding up to stop and stand before
her, a brown horse, with the stirrups of his saddle hung on the
pommel, his rein tied short up--Captain, the good, common friend of
Kenset--of the--foothills!

Tharon felt the blood pour back upon her heart and stay there for an
awful moment. She put up a hand and touched her throat, and to save
her life she did not know why this sudden sickening fear should come
upon her.

She had seen men killed, had known tragedy and loss and heartache, but
never before had she seen the crest of the distant Wall to dance upon
the pale skyline so. Then she whirled into the house and her young
voice pealed out a call--Billy, Conford, Bent--she drew them to her
running through the deep house--to point to the silent messenger and
question them with wide blue eyes where fear rose up like a living
thing.

Billy at her shoulder, looked not at Captain, but at her.

A sigh lifted his breast, but he stifled it at birth and turned with
the others back toward the corrals. Tharon, running toward the deep
room where the Virgin stood in Her everlasting beauty, unfastened her
soft white dress as she ran. Inside she flung herself on her knees
before the Holy Mother and poured out a trembling prayer.

"Not that! Oh, Mary, not that! Let it not be _that_!" she whispered
thickly. Then she was up, into her riding clothes--was out where the
boys were hurriedly saddling the Finger Marks. Presently she was on El
Rey and shooting like a silver shaft in the summer dusk down along the
green levels toward the east. They rode in silence, Conford, Bent,
Jack, Curly, Billy and herself, and a thousand thoughts were boiling
miserably in two hearts.

El Rey, Golden, Redbuck, Drumfire, Westwind and Sweetheart, they went
down along the sounding dark plain, a magnificent band. The whole
earth seemed to resound to the thunder of their going, and for once in
their lives her beauties could not run fast enough for the mistress of
Last's.

They went like the wind itself, and yet they were slow to Tharon.

Out of the open levels there swung up to meet them and to fade into
the night, the standing willows by the Silver Hollow. The sloping
stretches began to lift, dotted by the oaks and digger-pines for whose
sake