eyes, the wide black hat at an angle on
his iron-grey hair, leaned against the high bar and scanned the
crowded room where the riders played and laughed and swore with
abandon.

"Heard anything more about Canon Jim?" he asked Bullard, the
proprietor of The Golden Cloud, "ain't come in yet?"

Bullard shook his head.

"No--nor he won't, according to my notion. Think he mistook th' False
Ridge drop. Ain't no man could make it up again without th' hammer
spike an' rope."

"H'm--don't know. Don't know," mused Courtrey. "I've always thought it
could be done. There ought to be a way on th' other side, seems
like."

"Well, _ought_ an' _is_ is two diff'rent things, Buck," grinned
Bullard.

"Sure," nodded the king, "sure. An' yet--"

"Hello, Buck."

A soft hand touched Courtrey's shoulder with a subtle caress. He
wheeled on the instant, ready, alert. Then he smiled and reaching up,
took the hand and held it openly.

"Hello, Lola," he said, "how goes it?"

The newcomer was a woman, full, rounded, dark, and she was past-master
of men--as witness the slow glance that she turned interestedly out
over the teeming room, even while the pulse in the wrist in Courtrey's
clasp leaped like a racer. She was a perfect specimen of a certain
type, beautiful after a resplendent fashion, full of eye and lip,
confident, calm. She was brilliantly clad in crimson and black, and
rings of value shone on her ivory-like hands.

Lola of the Golden Cloud was known all over Lost Valley. Men who had
no women worshipped her--and some who had, also. At the Stronghold at
the Valley's head there was a woman who hated her, though she had
never set eyes on her--Courtrey's wife.

If Lola knew this she had never mentioned it, wise creature that she
was. Proud of her beauty and her power she had reigned at The Golden
Cloud in supreme indifference, even to her men themselves, it seemed,
though hidden undercurrents ran strong in her. Which way they tended
many a reckless buck of Lost Valley would have given much to know,
among them Courtrey himself.

Now she pulled her hand away from him and sauntered over to a table
where five men sat playing, laid it upon the shoulder of one of them,
leaned down and looked at the cards in his hand.

The man, a tall stripling in a silver-studded belt, looked up,
flattered.

Courtrey by the bar watched her, still smiling. Then he turned back
to Bullard and went on with his conversation.

Over by the wall a man