wn.

They began to take on the look of great distances, as if she gazed
far.

And for exactly three hours each day there could be heard the
monotonous bark-bark-bark of the big guns Jim Last had given her in
his final hour. To Billy Brent there was something terrible in this.
Bred to violence and the quick disasters of the country as he was, he
could not reconcile this grim practice with Tharon Last, the sane and
loving girl who could not bear the sight of suffering.

"I tell you, Curly," he complained to his friend of nights when they
came in and lounged in the soft dusk by the bunk-house, "it's
unnatural. Not that I don't pay full respect to Jim Last's memory,
an' him th' best man in all this hell-bent Valley, but it ain't right
an' natural fer no woman t' do what she's doin'. Ain't she Jim Last's
own daughter already with th' guns? Sure. Can drive a nail nigh as far
as he could. Quick as Wylackie Bob on th' draw an' as certain, now.
Then why must she keep it up?"

Curly, more silent in his ways but given to thought, studied the stars
that rode the darkening heavens and shook his head.

"Let her alone," he said once, "it was Last's command, an' he knew
what he was about even if he was toppin' th' rise of the Big Divide.

"He said 'you'll have to pro--'--you rec'lect? He meant _protect_ an'
unless I miss my guess, Billy, he'd have added '_yourself_' if th'
hand of Ol' Man Death hadn't stopped his words. Somethin' happened out
there in th' Cup Rim that day when Last got his that had to do with
Tharon, an' he knew she'd be in danger. Let her alone."

So Billy let her alone, as did the rest. She went her ways, saw to the
garden and made the butter in the cool springhouse, and sat in the
window seat in the twilights. She liked to have the men come in as
usual, but the talk these times was desultory, failing and brightening
with forced topics, to fail again and drop into silence while the dim
red lights of the smokers glowed in the shadows.

Time and again she stirred and sighed, and they knew that once again
she waited for Jim Last, listened for the clip-clap of El Rey coming
home along the sounding ranges.

Once, on a night when there was no moon and the tree-toads sang in the
cottonwoods by the spring, the girl, sitting so in the familiar
window, suddenly dropped her head on her knees and sobbed sharply in
the silence.

"Never again!" she said thickly from the folds of her denim skirt,
"I'll never see him co