ulling ears, "I'll get him, so
help me, God!"

And this was the end. Strangers were waiting to fulfill that promise,
to take her work out of her hands. She absently watched the moving dot
take form and sharply string out into a line of riding men. These
strangers with their hidden signs of authority would bring to his just
desserts Buck Courtrey, the man who had instigated the killing of poor
Harkness, who had personally shot her daddy in the back! For them,
then, she had made her crosses of promise in the granite under the
pointing pine.

They who had no right in Lost Valley would settle its blood scores,
would pay her debts!

She frowned and the fingers of her right hand fiddled at the gun-butt
at her hip.

For what had she striven all these many months? For what had she
perfected herself in Jim Last's art?

A little white line drew in about her lips, the flame in her blue eyes
leaped and flickered. The tawny brows gathered into a puckered frown.

Billy, watching, moved restlessly on his booted feet. He it was who
saw--who feared. He touched her wrist with timid fingers and she
flashed him a swift glance that half melted to a smile. Then she
forgot him and all the rest--for the Ironwoods were thundering in from
the outside levels, were coming into town.

Ahead rode Courtrey, big, black, keen, his wide hat swept back on his
iron-grey hair, an imposing presence.

"Here's your man!" said Kenset softly, rising excitedly on his elbow.
"He's coming! And God grant that there is no bloodshed!"

All of Corvan, so long meek and quiet under Courtrey's foot, moved
dramatically back to give him room to come thundering down to his
accounting.

In a few seconds he would be encompassed by his enemies.

And then, on the tick of fate, that universally unknown factor, a
woman's heart, flung its last pawn in the balance.

Lola, gleaming like a bird of paradise in her gay habiliments, leaning
forward from the further steps of Baston's store where she had slipped
up unnoticed, cupped her white hands to her scarlet mouth, and sent
out a cry like a clarion.

"Buck!" she called, bell-like, clear, far-reaching--"Buck! Turn back!
They've called your turn! It's all up for you! Go! Go--down--the Wall!
And--God bless you--Buck! Good-bye!"

For one awful moment the great red Ironwood, Bolt, flung up his head
and slid forward on his haunches, ploughing up the earth in a cloud.

Then, while the half-stunned crowd gaped in silence,