a longing for the "flesh-pots" of the world as he had
styled it once, would have had short shrift at Last's. He would have
received his time and "gone packing" swiftly.

And Tharon was content.

Barring the loneliness that had come with Jim Last's death, she was
well content.

So she lay by the willows and hummed a sliding tune, a soft, sweet
thing of minors and high notes falling, like rippling waters, and
lazily watched the high white clouds sail by.

And as she lay she became conscious of something else in the drowsing
land beside herself and her horse. She felt it first, this presence--a
thin, dim vibration that sang in the earth beneath her. It stopped the
wordless song on her lips, stilled the breath in her throat, set every
nerve in her to listening, as it were.

Presently she sat up and felt quickly for the gun-butts in their
scabbards. Then she parted the willows and looked out over the rolling
slopes and levels. True enough. A horseman was coming in from the
west, making for the Silver Hollow, but Tharon smiled and her fingers
relaxed on the gun. This man rode straight--like a lance, she
thought--and his mount was brown, a good-enough common horse, but no
steed of Lost Valley.

Captain lacked the fire, the ramping keenness of the Ironwoods, the
spirit and dash of the Finger Marks. For a long time the girl in the
willows watched them. Then as they came near she rose and caught El
Rey's bridle.

He was no gentleman, this big blue-silver king. He was savage and wild
and imperious. He hated other horses with a quick hatred sometimes and
had been known to wreak this sudden rage upon them in sickening fury.

So Tharon held him with a strong brown hand wrapped in the chain below
the Spanish spade bit in his mouth. She stood beside him, waiting, a
slim, golden creature, tawny of hair and blue of eye, and the great
horse towered above her mightily, his silver mane blowing up above his
arching neck in the little wind that came from the south.

They made a picture that Kenset never forgot, as he swung round the
willows and faced them.

El Rey screamed and pounded with his striped hoofs, but Tharon jerked
him down with no gentle hand.

"Be still, you bully!" she said sharply.

"Why, Miss Last!" cried the forest man, "I'm so glad to meet you!"

There was the genuine delight of a boy in his voice, and Tharon caught
the note. The sweet, disarming smile parted her lips and she was all
girl at the moment, artl