ily at such times and
the fire that shot from his eyes, light, too, under the same corn-silk
lashes, was a rare thing. Nothing but this had ever set it burning. He
was a slight man, narrow-chested and thin. They had been from run-down
stock, these two, a strain that seemed indigenous to the Valley,
without other memories. Their name was Whitmore, and they had lived
all their lives in a poor cove up beyond the Valley's head where the
barren rocklands came down out of the skies. There had been, besides
themselves, only the father and mother, worn-out workers, who had
died at last, leaving the brother and sister to live as best they
might in the solitudes.

Here Courtrey had found them, both in their teens, and he had promptly
taken them both along with their scant affairs. It was about the only
thing to his credit that he had married Ellen, hard and fast enough,
with the offices of a bona fide justice, a matter which he had
regretted often enough in the years that followed.

It was this knowledge which set the light burning in Cleve's eyes.

He knew how Ellen loved Courtrey.

He knew also that Lola of the Golden Cloud had made the cattle king
step lively for over a year. He saw the daily growing impatience with
which Courtrey regarded his marriage.

He resented with every ounce of the repressed spirit there was in him
the girl's poor standing at the Stronghold.

Black Bart and Wylackie Bob treated her with no more consideration
than any of the Indian serving women. They swore and drank before her
with an abandon that made the young man's nails cut deep in his palms
at times, the blood mount high in his white cheeks.

And Ellen drooped like a lily on a broken stem, brooded over her
husband's absences, and hated the name of Lola, used openly to her as
a cruel joke.

The Stronghold was a huge place. The house was like the majority of
the habitations of the region, built of adobe and able to stand siege
against a regiment. It was shaded by cottonwoods and spruces, flanked
by corrals and barns and sheds until the place resembled a small
town.

Cleve Whitmore rode for Courtrey but his heart was not in Courtrey's
game. He was slim and sullen, dissatisfied, slow of speech,
repressed.

He worked early and late and thought a lot.

Courtrey, who kept close count of the favours he did for others,
considered Cleve deep in his debt and paid him a niggardly wage. So it
was, that when the newly organized Vigilantes under T