ws th' Canons, an' when he's there, it's peopled, an' no mistake!

"But it must be beautiful--beautiful! Why--there's a thousand feet of
crevasse on every hand, I know, steps an' benches an' weathered faces
that no man can climb. They say there's bright waters that tumble
down like th' Vestal's Veil and sink into holes without an outlet.
Just go away in the rock. There's strange flowers an' stunted trees.
An' they tell of th' Cup of God, a hidden glade so beautiful that th'
eye of man has never seen its like. All my life it's called me, th'
Canon Country.

"Don't you believe, Paula, that there's somethin' there for me? Some
reason why I know I must some day go into its heart an' give myself up
to it for a time? If I was free," she finished with a sigh, "if I was
my own woman, wholly, I'd go soon. There's rest an' peace up there, I
know--and a place to think of Jim Last without such bitterness that my
heart turns t' gall."

She shook her bright head against the doorpost and shut her soft lips
into a straight line.

"Nope," she finished sadly, "I ain't my own woman yet."

* * * * *

"Tharon," said Billy Brent this day, clanking around the corner of the
adobe house, his leather chaps flapping with every step, his yellow
hair curling boyishly under his hat-brim. "Tharon, I got bad news for
you."

There was genuine distress in his grey eyes.

"Yes?" asked the mistress of Last's, straightening up.

"Yes, sir, an' I hate like hell t' tell it."

"Out with it, Billy. What's wrong?"

"Somebody's dynamited th' Crystal Spring in th' Cup Rim."

"_What?_"

The word was in italics. Its one syllable told all one might care to
know of the importance of Billy's news.

"Yes. Opened her up fer two square yards. Spread th' lovely old
Crystal all over th' range. An' she's gone, as sure's shootin'.
Nothin' but a lot o' wet an' dryin' mud to show for her."

Tharon drew a long breath.

"Courtrey's beginnin'," she said. "He's heard th' word I sent th'
settlers. He's goin' t' use th' tactics now with Last's that he's used
with every poor devil he wanted to run out of th' Valley, th' tactics
he darsent use while Jim Last lived. Well--go send Conford to me,
Billy."

The girl sat down in the doorway and gazed sombrely out over the
summer land.

When her foreman came and stood before her, a slim, efficient figure,
dark-faced and quiet, she had already made up her mind.

"Burt," she s