IN THE VALLEY

Kenset, two days later, gave Sam Drake a check for five hundred
dollars and a letter, unpostmarked but sealed with tape and wax.
Drake, who owned some half-breed Ironwoods, rode the best one down the
Wall.

Kenset had cautioned him not to talk before he left--he feared Drake's
propensity for speech. But he was the only man in Lost Valley whom he
felt he could approach.

With the courier's departure he rode back to the Holding and told
Tharon and Conford what he had done.

"These men are the best to be had," he said, "and they will go
anywhere on earth for money."

But Tharon frowned and struck a fist into a soft palm.

"What you mean?" she cried, "by takin' my work out of my hands like
this? I won't have it! I won't wait!"

"What I meant when I caught your bridle that day in the glade,"
answered the man, "to stop you from bloodshed."

Then he went back to his cabin and his interrupted work and set
himself to wait in patience for the return of Drake.

* * * * *

But in Lost Valley a leaven was rising. It had begun insidiously to
work with the appearance of Kenset in Tharon's band at Courtrey's
doorstep. It burst up like a mushroom with a chance remark made by
Lola of the Golden Cloud--Lola, who had seen, since that night in
spring when Tharon Last stood in the door and promised to "get" her
father's killer, that Courtrey was slipping from her. A woman like
Lola is hard to deceive.

Much experience had taught her to feel the change of winds in the
matter of allegiance.

She knew that surely and swiftly this man had gone down the path of
unreasoning love, that he would give anything he possessed, do
anything possible, to win for himself this slim mistress of Last's
Holding.

Therefore she played the one card she held, hoping to rouse the bully,
and did just the thing she was trying to avert.

"Buck," she said, her black head on his shoulder, her dark eyes
watching covertly his careless face, "the Last girl is lost to every
Valley man. Sooner or later she'll leave the country, mark my word,
with this Forest Service fellow, for she's in love with him, though
she doesn't know it yet."

With a slow movement Courtrey loosed his arm about Lola and lifted her
from him. His eyes were narrowed as he looked into her face.

"For God's sake!" he said, "what makes you think that?"

"Knowledge," said Lola, "long knowledge of women and men."

"If I though