themselves, there were those in the big world of below who
could--that there were men of the Secret Service who could find that
gun no matter where Courtrey or Ellen hid it, that Lost Valley, no
matter what its isolation or its history, was yet in the U. S. A., and
could be tamed.

Then the Vigilantes were gone with jangle of spur and bit-chain, and
he was the last to go, standing by Captain in the dim starlight.
Tharon stood beside him, and for some unaccountable reason the grim
purpose of their acquaintance seemed to drift away, to leave them
together, alone under the stars, a man and a maid. Kenset stood for a
long moment and looked at the faint outline of her face. She was still
in her riding clothes, her head bare with its ribbon half untied in
the nape of her slender neck.

The tree-toads were singing off by the springhouse and the cattle in
the big corrals made the low, ceaseless night-sounds common to a
herd.

The riders were gone, the _vaqueros_ were at their posts around the
resting stock, the low adobe house was settling into the quiet of the
night.

Miserably Kenset looked at this slip of a girl.

She was strange to him, unfathomable. There were depths beneath the
changing blue eyes which appalled him. How would he feel toward her
when the thing was done--when she had killed Courtrey?

But she must not be allowed to do it. Not though it took his life.

If she was pledged to this thing, he was no less pledged to its
prevention.

He felt a sadness within him as he saw the soft curve of her cheek,
the outline of her tawny head.

With an impulse which he could not govern he reached out suddenly and
took her hands in his and pressed them against his heart. The pounding
of that heart was noticeable through her hands into his.

But he did not speak--he could not.

But he had no need. He could have said nothing that would have
cleared the situation, would have told himself or her what was in that
pounding heart of his--for to save his life he did not know.

And Tharon frowned in the darkness and drew her hands from under those
pressing ones.

"Mr. Kenset," she said steadily, "you're always tryin' to make me
weak, to break me down with words an' looks an' touches. These hands
o' yours,--_damn 'em_, they _do_ make me weak! Don't put 'em on me
again!"

And with a sudden, sharp savagery she struck his hands off his breast,
whirled away in the darkness and was gone.

CHAPTER IX

SIGNAL FIRES