Cloud th' other night?"

Tharon shifted the meal-sack higher on her left arm. Courtrey's eyes
went down to her right hand and stayed there.

The girl's upper lip lifted from her teeth in a sneer that was the
acme of insult. The fire was beginning to play in her blue eyes.

"Law?" she said. "My God! Law!"

"Yes, _law_! you young hussy, an' don't you fergit that I represent
it."

The girl threw down the sack and flashed both hands on the gun-butts.
Courtrey, watching, was half-a-second behind her and stopped with his
hands hovering.

"Not much, Courtrey," she said, "you fast gun man! You're too slow.
An' this ain't your game, anyway, not face t' face. You're all right
on a dark night--_an' from behind_. Fine! But you're a coward. You're
what I called you before--an assassin."

She was pale as ashes, her eyes narrowed to blazing slits. Jim Last,
gun man, was in her like those composite pictures which show the
shadow in the substance. There was a gasp from the store porch where
Thomas stood with a shaking hand covering his lips. Baston was stuck
against his wall like a leech, rigid. These men knew that she tempted
death.

Not a man in Lost Valley could have done it and gotten away with it.

Tharon knew it, too, but she did not care.

"An' now you know what you are, Courtrey. I'll tell th' same to you,
Step Service. Law! In Lost Valley? Yes, Courtrey's law! Th' law of th'
gun alone--th' law of thieves--th' law of murderers. An' you stand for
that, you bet! What were you before you took th' oath of office? Tell
me that! Th' man who killed old Mike McCrea an' took his cattle down
th' Wall! Th' whole Valley knows it--but we've never dared to say it
before!"

The porch was lined with people now. Soft-footed Indians and Mexican
_vaqueros_, sprung from nowhere, cowboys, ranchers, women, they came
silently up and listened.

The sheriff's red face was the colour of liver, purple and mottled
with bursting rage. His fingers worked at his sides. He set his lips,
and his small eyes never left the girl's face.

Tharon, crouched a bit, her feet apart, her elbows crooked above her
hips, her fingers curled on her gun-butts with nice precision, wet her
own pale lips and continued:

"An' who put you in office? That laugh of an office! Who? Why,
Courtrey--th' biggest thief, th' coldest murderer in th' country! _He_
put you there! An' what are you good for? My daddy was shot--_in th'
back_--an' did you make one inquiry into