these?" and he reached a hand to tap the gun on her lap.

"Why? That very question'd show your ignorance to any Lost Valley man.
Because it's all there is. You've seen Courtrey. You've seen Steptoe
Service. Can't you judge from them?"

"Surely, so far as they two go. A bad man and a bad sheriff. But they
are not all the officers of this County. Where and who is your
Superior Judge?"

"Poor ol' Ben Garland. Weaker'n skim milk. Scared to say his soul's
his own."

There was infinite scorn in her voice.

"No, it's Steptoe Service, or nothin'."

Kenset thought a moment.

"Who's the Coroner?" he asked presently.

"Jim Banner," she answered quickly, "as straight a man as ever lived.
Brave, too. He's been shot at more'n once fer takin' exception to some
raw piece o' work in this Valley, fer pokin' his nose in, so to speak.
Jim Last used to say he was th' only _man_ at the Seat, which is
Corvan, you know, of course."

"District Attorney?"

"Tom Nord. Keen as a razor an' married to Courtrey's sister. Now do
you see why this is th' law?" She, too, tapped the gun.

Kenset frowned and looked down along the green range. He thought of
the unpainted pine building in Corvan which was the Court House. A
strange personnel, truly, to invest it with authortity!

"I see," he said briefly, "but there must be some way out. This is not
the right way, the way that must come and last."

Tharon's lips drew into the thin line that made them like her
father's. "It's th' law that's here," she said and there was an
instant coldness in her voice, "an' it's th' law that'll last until
Courtrey or I go down."

The man, watching, saw that thinning of the lips, the hardening of all
the young lines of her face. He knew he had blundered. Talk was cheap.
It was action that counted in Lost Valley.

With a quick motion he reached over and caught the girl's hand and
drew it to him, covering it with both of his.

Her eyes followed, came to rest on his face, cool, appraising,
waiting.

She was, in all that had counted in his life, crude, untutored,
basic.

Yet that calm look made his impulsive action seem unpardonable in the
next second. However a warm surge of feeling shot through him with the
quiet resting of that firm brown hand between his own, and he held it
tighter. Kenset had thought he was sophisticated, that little or
nothing could stir him deeply--not since Ethel Van Riper had gone to
Europe as the bride of the old Count of Eastha