fingering a pack of cards, was
not one to be passed over easily. He was notorious.

Tall, slow of action, sleepy-eyed, he was treacherous as a snake, as
swift to move when necessary. He had been known to sit as he was now,
idly playing, to leap up, crouch, draw and kill a man, and be down
again at his place, idly playing, before the breath was done in his
victim.

He was a past-master of his gun, and unlike most men of the time and
place, he carried only one.

He was a quarter-blood Wylackie Indian. Near him sat the stranger who
had ridden the slug-head black into Lost Valley. They both looked up
as the girl entered and regarded her with smiles.

Tharon did not look at them again. She saw, however, that they were
together, of one interest. There were two or three of the settlers in
the store, Jameson from over under the Rockface at the south, Hill
from farther up, Thomas from Rolling Cove. She spoke to these men
quietly and noticed with an inward thrill the eagerness with which
they responded.

There was an electric something between them which told her that her
promise had, indeed, gone up and down the country, that in a subtle,
unheralded manner she stood in Jim Last's place, a head, a leader.

She made her purchases without undue speech, got two letters in her
father's name--and these brought a smarting under her eyelids--tied up
her sack and went out without so much as a glance at the two men in
the corner. Laughter followed her, however, which set the red blood of
anger pulsing in her cheeks.

At the end of the store porch she came face to face with Courtrey and
Steptoe Service, the sheriff of Menlo county. She swung to one side to
descend the rough steps, vouchsafing them no word or look, but Service
blocked her way. She raised her eyes and looked him full in the face,
scanning his coarse red features coolly.

"Well?" she said sharply.

"What's this I hear, Tharon?" asked Service, "about you a-makin'
threats?"

"What have you heard?" she wanted to know.

"W'y, that you're a-makin' threats."

"Yes?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well?"

The sheriff flushed darker.

"Look here, young woman,"--he raised his voice suddenly and on the
instant there was a sound of boots on the store floor and the
settlers, the two men in the corner, Baston and two clerks came
crowding out to hear, "you look a-here--don't you know it's a-gin th'
law for any one t' make a threat like you done, open an' above board,
in th' Golden