would be forever
unredeemed, a shame, a sadness, a living accusation!

Nay--not that! Not that!

She had promised--and the Law was waiting--the big Law of below.

She was Jim Last's daughter still.

She leaned closer to El Rey's neck--held her two guns ready--and rode
with the very wind.

She was near now--she could see Courtrey's face, waxen white but
fearless, his dark eyes turned back toward her in a sort of desperate
admiration.... Courtrey loved strength and courage and all things wild
and fierce. She could see Bolt's staring eyeballs, his open mouth,
gasping and piteous. One more moment--another--yet one more--then she
rose in her stirrups and fired straight at the broad bay temple,
shining and black with sweat!

The great gallant Ironwood went down in a huge arc--first his
beautiful head, then the sinking arch of his neck, then the shoulders
that had worked so wondrously. He rolled on his back like a hoop, his
iron-shod hoofs spinning for one spectacular moment in the air. Then
he lay at sudden ease, his still fluttering nose pointing directly
back the way he had come.

With the first catching stumble of the true forefeet, the man on his
back had shot out of the saddle and far ahead. He landed twenty feet
away and squarely on his head and shoulders. Like Bolt, Courtrey's
body turned a complete somersault--and lay still, at sudden peace.

Tharon Last and El Rey went on like an arrow--they could not stop.

When at last she did draw the great king down she was far and away
from the spot. She turned her head, panting and dizzy, and looked
back.... She could see the prone red heap that was Bolt--a little way
beyond that other, lesser, darker heap....

For a long time she sat on El Rey's heaving back and stared unseeingly
at the green earth where the short grasses quivered in the little
wind.

There was a deathly white line about her lips, but her eyes blazed
with the fire that had characterized them from birth, the flickering,
unfathomable flame that came and went.

Then, presently, new lines came in her young face, unstable lines that
quivered and worked, and all the good green earth danced grotesquely
before her vision, for a wall of tears shut out the world. ... She
laid her head down on El Rey's cloudy mane--and wept.

* * * * *

It was early dawn at Last's Holding. The sun was not yet up behind the
eastern ramparts. The cottonwoods whispered in the dawn