min' home again!"

The riders stirred. Sympathy ached in their hearts, but not a man had
speech to comfort her. It was Billy, the impulsive, who reached a hand
to her shoulder and gripped it hard. Tharon reached up and touched the
hand in gratitude.

It was about this time, when the master of Last's Holding had lain a
month beneath the staring mound under the pine tree out to the east
where they had buried Harkness, that Jose finished a work of art. For
many days he had laboured secretly in a calf-shed out behind the small
corrals, and in his slim dark fingers there was beauty unleashed.
Finest carving he knew, since his forbears, peons across the Border,
had spent their lives upon the beams of the Missions. None had taught
Jose. It was in his blood. Therefore, from a block of the hard grey
stone of the region, which was almost like granite, he fashioned a
cross, as tall as Tharon herself, struck it out freehand and true, and
set upon its austere face fine tracery of vines and Jim Last's name.
He took into the secret Billy and Curly, since these two he was sure
of, and together they hauled the huge thing out and set it up.

When Tharon, looking to the east with dawn, as was her habit, beheld
this silent tribute to the man she had so loved, she leaned her
forehead against the deep window-case and wept from the depths.

Then she went out to see it and with a knife she set her own mark
thereon--a tiny cross scratched in the headpiece, another in the arm
that stretched toward all that was mortal of poor Harkness.

"Two," she said, dry-eyed, while the glorious dawn shot up to bathe
the world in glory, "full pay for you both."

* * * * *

El Rey, stamping in his own corral, lifted his beautiful head, scanned
the wide reaches that spread away in living green, and tossing up his
muzzle, sent out on the silence a ringing call. He cocked his silver
ears and listened. No clear-cut human whistle answered him. Once more
he called and listened.

Then he lowered his head and stepped along the fence. His great body,
shining like blue satin with a silver frost upon it, gave and lifted
with every step. The pastern joints above his striped hoofs were
resilient as pliant springs. The muscles rippled in his shoulders, the
blue-white cascade of his silver tail flowed to his heels, his mane
was like a cloud upon the arch of his neck. He was strength and beauty
incarnate, a monster machine of