if I'd
been on anythin' but El Rey I would. They tried to drive me into Black
Coulee."

"Hell!" said Billy softly.

Then the Mistress of Last's remembered her manners.

"Billy," she said, "I make you acquainted with Kenset of th'
foothills. I rode in here just in time to shake th' Stronghold
bunch."

The two men spoke, reached to shake each other's hands, and took a
long survey that was mutual. As the two pairs of eyes met, a wall
seemed to rear itself between them, a mist, a curtain, something
intangible, but there.

They looked across the woman's shoulder, and from that moment she was
to stand between, though what there could be in common between the man
in the U. S. service and the common rider from Last's was not
apparent. El Rey was eager for flight and by the time Tharon's foot
was in the stirrup he was up on his hind feet, fore feet beating the
air, silver mane like a flying cloud. The girl rose with him
gracefully, threw her leg across the saddle, waved a hand to Kenset in
the door, and in another moment they were gone away down the grassy
slope, out through the opening, had stretched away along the
oak-dotted plain, swung toward the north, and were out of sight.

The forest man turned away from the doorway, stood a moment looking
over the cabin where the late light was making golden patterns on the
green and brown rug, sighed and reached for his pipe.

Somehow all the spirit seem to have gone from the summer day. The long
twilight was setting in.

"She wouldn't shake hands," he muttered to himself, "and what she said
was true as death. She's _sworn_--and it is a solemn oath to her. God
help the man who killed her daddy!"

Then once more he sighed, unconsciously.

"And Lord God help her!" he finished very gravely, "she is so
sweet--so wild and spirited and sweet."

Tharon and Billy let the horses run. Golden was a racer himself,
though he could not hold a candle to the silver king, and the two
young creatures atop were free as the summer winds, as buoyant and
filled with joy of being. So they shot down along the levels, Tharon
holding El Rey up a bit, though it was a man-size job to do so, and
Billy's rein swinging loose on Golden's neck. They passed the last of
the scattered oaks, came out to the green stretches. The sun was
swinging like a copper ball above the Wall at the west. Down through
the canyons the light came in long red shafts that cut through the
cobalt shadows like sharp lances of