m the air, the very blueness from the vaulted skies, something that
had come with the quiet man of the pine-tree badge. So Billy sighed in
the darkness and sat easily on Drumfire, his slim left hand fidgeting
with the swinging rein.

And Tharon was lost, too, in a maze of thoughts. She sat straight
as a lance, tense, alive, keen, staring into the narrow bore of the high
ceiled cut, thinking feverishly. Was Kenset really alive? Had
Courtrey been square with her? Or was he even now lying stiff and
stark somewhere in the high cuts, his dark eyes dull with death, that
beating heart forever stilled? She caught her breath with a whistling
sigh, felt her head swim at the picture. If he was--_if_--_he_--_was_--!
She fingered the big guns at her hip and savagery took hold of her.
Courtrey's left wrist to match his right. Then some pretty work about
him to make him wait--then a shot through his stomach--he would spit
blood and reel, but he wouldn't die--the butcher!--for a little while,
and she would taunt him with Harkness--and Jim. Last shot in the
back--with Old Pete--and with--with Kenset--the one man--Oh, the one
man in all the world whose quiet smile was unforgettable, whose vital
hands were upon hers now, like ghost-hands, would always be upon hers
if she lived to be old like Anita or died at dawn today! And Kenset
had counseled her to peace! To keep the stain of blood from her own
hands! She laughed aloud, suddenly, a ghastly sound that made cold
chills go down her rider's spine, for it was the mad laughter of the
blood-lust! Billy knew that Jim Last in his best moments was never
so coldly a killer as his daughter was tonight.

So they traversed the roofed cut and came out into the starlight of
the first canyon. Up this they went in single file. They passed the
place where Albright had found the dark spray on the canyon wall, the
standing rock where the gun with the untrue firing pin had kicked away
its shell. A little farther on was the disturbed and trampled heap of
slide which had held Old Pete's body. In silence they rode on, the
horses' hoofs striking a million echoes from the reverberating
crosscuts.

The moon was shining above, but here there was only a sifted light, a
ghostly radiance of starlight and painted walls. Tharon, riding ahead,
went unerringly forward as if she traveled the open ways of the Valley
floor. She turned from the main canyon toward the left and passed the
mouth of Old Pete's snow-bed. Betwe