ould hold their tongues.

But with the new knowledge Tharon Last took on a light, a halo.

Men spoke in whispers about her daring. They felt it themselves.

Word of her lightning quickness with her daddy's guns, of her
accuracy, went softly all about and about, garbled and accentuated.
They said she could shoot the studs from the sides of a man's belt and
never touch him. They said she could drive a nail farther than the
ordinary man could see. They said she could draw so swiftly that the
motion of the hands was lost.

A slow excitement took the faction of the settlers.

But out at Last's Holding a grave anxiety sat upon Tharon's riders.
Conford knew--and Billy knew--and Curly knew more about Courtrey's
intent than some of the others. Young Paula, half asleep in the deep
recesses of the house, had witnessed that furious encounter by the
western door on the soft spring day when Jim Last had come home to die
at dusk. She knew that the look in Courtrey's eyes had been
covetousness--and she had told Jose. Jose, loyal and sensible, had
told the boys. So now there was always one or more of them on duty
near the mistress of Last's on one pretext or another. To Tharon, who
knew more than all of them put together, this was funny.

It stirred the small mirth there was in her these days, and often she
sent them away, to have them turn up at the most unexpected times and
places.

"You boys!" she would say whimsically, "you think Courtrey's goin' to
cart me off livin'?"

"That's just what we are afraid of, Tharon," answered Conford gravely
once, "we know it'd not be _livin'_."

And Tharon had looked away toward Jose's cross, and frowned.

"No," she said, "an' it won't be any way, _livin'_ or dead."

One night toward the end of that week a strange cavalcade wound up
along the levels, past the head of Black Coulee, forded the Broken
Bend in silence save for the stroke of hoof and iron shoe on stone,
and went toward Last's. There were thirty men, riding close, and they
had nothing to say in the darkness.

At the Holding Tharon Last waited them on her western doorstep.

As they rode in along the sounding-board the muffled ringing of the
hoofs seemed to the girl as the call of clarions. The heart in her
breast leaped with a strange thrill, a gladness. She felt as if her
father's spirit stood behind her waiting the first step toward the
fulfillment of her promise.

The riders stopped in the soft darkness. There was no moo