nly here and there along the rows of faces
did one cower. There were faces, many faces, that looked back at him
with steady eyes and tight lips.... Verily it was time he conquered
the riding, shooting, beautiful she-devil who had made this thing
possible! The sooner he got Tharon Last away from this bunch of spawn
the better. Then he would sweep in with all his old swift methods,
only sharper ones this time, and "clean" them all. When he got through
it would be a different man's Valley, make no mistake about that!

Here Ellen looked straight into his eyes and both were conscious of
the shock. Ellen wilted and Courtrey frowned and struck a fist against
the railing near him.... He looked up and met the hesitating eyes of
Ben Garland on the bench and his own hardened down to pin points.

The farce was finished save for the Judge's decision--Dick Burtree was
slumped in his chair, dead drunk and asleep. Wylackie Bob was lighting
a cigarette in his brown fingers, a smile on his evil mouth, his slow,
black eyes covering the slim white form of Ellen in a speculative way,
as if he dreamed of making true his blasphemous lies. Ellen was sweet
as a flower in her open-lipped beauty, her panting despair. Wylackie
did not notice the slim man beside her whose lips were so tight that
they were a mere line across his face. No one at the Stronghold
noticed Cleve much.

Then Ben Garland was speaking, and Ellen gathered her dim wits enough
to make out that he was saying strange things--awful things--that had
to do with Courtrey's freedom.

Then she knew--swaying and groping with her blue-veined hands--that
the thing was done--that she was no longer a wife. That she would
never again sleep in the bend of Courtrey's arm as she had slept in
those golden days of long ago--that she was an outcast, blackened
beyond all hope by the damning and unchoice words of Wylackie Bob....
Then the world faded out for Ellen in merciful blackness.

The petty officials rose with laughter and clanking of boots on the
board floors--the crowd filed out in a striking silence. Never before
had a crowd in Lost Valley gone out from a courtroom in that strange
and bodeful silence.

The sight of Ellen lying white and limp across Cleve Whitmore's
shoulder like a sack of grain, as he passed out with the moving mass,
had an odd effect. It was partly the white dress that did it--and the
time was ripe.

Courtrey and his gang were toward the fore--first out. They spre