t that sight an exultant cry, savage, inhuman, ugly, burst from her
throat.

She was within long gunshot now--was closing her fingers lightly on
the blue gun-butts----.

Courtrey heard that cry.

He rose in his saddle--turned--flashed up his hand and fired. Quick as
the motion of the gun man was, Tharon Last was quicker. She dropped
over El Rey's shoulder like a cat, firing as she went.

Courtrey's bullet clipped the cantle of the big saddle an inch above
her flattened leg across it. Hers did something else--what she had
dreamed of. It struck that other wrist of Courtrey's, the left--and
sent his six-gun tumbling.

Once again she yelled as she came back in her saddle.

And El Rey was closing--closing up the gap between.

Once again Tharon raised her guns to shoot--both, this time, as her
daddy had taught her. This was the pinnacle of her life, her skill,
her training.

Never again would she live a moment like it. She laughed and crouched
for the final act.

But a sudden coldness went over her from head to foot, sent the hot
blood shaking down her spine.

What was Courtrey doing?

He rode straight up at last, like an Indian showing, and his bleeding
left hand swung at his side. With the other he had swept off his wide
hat, so that his handsome iron-grey head was bare to the summer sun.
His keen hawk face was lifted. He made a spectacular figure--like a
warrior, unarmed, waiting his end with courage.

_Unarmed!_

That it was which struck Tharon like a hand across her face. The gun
he had used with his left hand was his only one! He had carried but
one since that night at the Stronghold when she had first marked him.

She should have known! Word of this had been about Corvan and the
Valley.

And so she had Buck Courtrey at her mercy. She could close the
lessening gap and kill him in his saddle----

But the icy blood still seemed to trickle down her back.

She--and Jim Last--they had always fought in fair-and-open. They
were no murderers.... They did not strike in the dark--shoot a man from
ambush--nor kill a man unarmed.... And Kenset--Kenset of the
foothills--what had he said about the stain of blood--blood-guilt--clean
hands----

The girl caught her breath with a choking sob.

The game was up.

Neither Jim Last--nor Kenset--nor she--would shoot a man unarmed.

And Courtrey was riding toward the Bottle Neck.

He would go down the Wall to freedom.

And the crosses in Jim Last's granite--they