spread like figures in a tapestry. The figures of her riders were
small dots on the outskirts.

El Rey, always hard on the bit, always strong-headed, wanted to run
and she swung loose her rein and let him go. But run as he might,
there was always in his speed that rising note, that seeming of
reserve power.

She passed the head of Black Coulee, swung out across the edge of
Rolling Cove, thundered down to the ford of the Broken Bend. Here she
let the stallion drink, deep draughts that would have slowed a lesser
horse. El Rey went up the bank beyond the ford like a charging engine,
squared away and stretched out to finish his run. He was within three
miles of Corvan, set like a stone in a smooth green surface, before he
came down and lifted his shoulders into his gait. With the first rock
and swing of the singlefoot, Tharon smiled and settled herself more
comfortably in the saddle. This was joy to her, this beautiful
syncopation, this poetic marked time that reeled off the miles beneath
her and would scarcely have shaken a pebble from her hat-brim.

As she struck the outskirts of the little town the unmistakable sound
of El Rey's iron-shod hoofs brought heads into doors, children at the
house corners to look upon her. She came down the main street at a
smart clip, to bring up with a slide at the hitch-rail before
Baston's store where the monthly mail was handled. There were horses
tied there, and among them she saw what caused her to look twice with
a narrowing of her keen eyes--a huge, raw-boned, black, rusty and
slug-headed, among the Ironwood bays from Courtrey's Stronghold.

"H'm," she told herself quietly, "so there's where he was expected."

She tied El Rey to himself, far from the rest, for she knew his
imperious temper and that trouble would ensue if he was near strange
horses.

Then she went into Baston's with her meal-sack on her arm. This
meal-sack was a part of her accoutrement, a regular carry-all for such
small purchases as she must take home--a roll of print for Paula, some
tobacco for the men, a dozen spools of the linen thread which was so
much prized among the women of Lost Valley.

As she stepped in the open door her quick glance went over the big
room with a comprehensiveness which catalogued its inmates accurately
and instinctively. Courtrey was not there, though his great bay, Bolt,
stood outside. However, Wylackie Bob was there. This man, sitting at a
canvas covered table in a corner, idly