THE HORSES OF THE FINGER MARKS
At Last’s Holding a change had taken place. The sun of spring still shone as brightly, the work of the place went on as usual. The riders went at dawn and came at dusk, their herds lowing across the rolling green spaces, the days were as busy as they had ever been, but it seemed as if Last’s waited for something that would never happen, for some one who would never come. Conford, quiet, forceful, businesslike, carried on the work without a ripple. To a casual eye all things were as they had been. But to the keen eyes in the tanned faces of Last’s riders the change was appallingly apparent. They saw it creep day by day into their lives, felt it in the very atmosphere, and it was grim and promising.
Old Anita felt it and watched with dim and wistful eyes. Pretty young Paula from the Pomo Indian settlement far to the north of the Valley under the Rockface felt it and was more silent, 30 cat-like of step than ever. José, always full of laughter at his outside work, was sobered.
For this change was not material, but spiritual, and it had to do with Tharon, who was now the mistress of Last’s.
She no longer sang her wordless songs, no longer played for hours on the little old melodeon by the western door. Something had gone from the brightness of her face, a shadow had come instead. She was just as swift and gentle in her care for all the things of every day, as efficient and painstaking, but she did not laugh, and the tiny lines that had characterized her father’s blue eyes, began to show distinctly about her own.
They began to take on the look of great distances, as if she gazed far.
And for exactly three hours each day there could be heard the monotonous bark-bark-bark of the big guns Jim Last had given her in his final hour. To Billy Brent there was something terrible in this. Bred to violence and the quick disasters of the country as he was, he could not reconcile this grim practice with Tharon Last, the sane and loving girl who could not bear the sight of suffering.
“I tell you, Curly,” he complained to his friend of nights when they came in and lounged in the soft dusk by the bunk-house, “it’s unnatural. 31 Not that I don’t pay full respect to Jim Last’s memory, an’ him th’ best man in all this hell-bent Valley, but it ain’t right an’ natural fer no woman t’ do what she’s doin’. Ain’t she Jim Last’s own daughter already with th’ guns? Sure. Can drive a nail nigh as far as he could. Quick as Wylackie Bob on th’ draw an’ as certain, now. Then why must she keep it up?”
Curly, more silent in his ways but given to thought, studied the stars that rode the darkening heavens and shook his head.
“Let her alone,” he said once, “it was Last’s command, an’ he knew what he was about even if he was toppin’ th’ rise of the Big Divide.
“He said ‘you’ll have to pro––’––you rec’lect? He meant protect an’ unless I miss my guess, Billy, he’d have added ‘yourself’ if th’ hand of Ol’ Man Death hadn’t stopped his words. Somethin’ happened out there in th’ Cup Rim that day when Last got his that had to do with Tharon, an’ he knew she’d be in danger. Let her alone.”
So Billy let her alone, as did the rest. She went her ways, saw to the garden and made the butter in the cool springhouse, and sat in the window seat in the twilights. She liked to have the men come in as usual, but the talk these times was desultory, failing and brightening with forced topics, to fail again and drop into silence while 32 the dim red lights of the smokers glowed in the shadows.
Time and again she stirred and sighed, and they knew that once again she waited for Jim Last, listened for the clip-clap of El Rey coming home along the sounding ranges.
Once, on a night when there was no moon and the tree-toads sang in the cottonwoods by the spring, the girl, sitting so in the familiar window, suddenly dropped her head on her knees and sobbed sharply in the silence.
“Never again!” she said thickly from the folds of her denim skirt, “I’ll never see him comin’ 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 José 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 33 their lives upon the beams of the Missions. None had taught José. 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 34 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 living might.
Unrest was upon him. Life had become stagnant, a tasteless thing. He was keen for the open stretches, honing to be gone down the wind. He fretted and ate out his heart for the freedom of the range. Old Anita, passing at some work or other, stopped and gazed at him for a compassionate moment.
“You, too, grande caballo,” she said, “there is naught but grief at Last’s Holding. Tharone querida” she called into the house, “come here.”
Tharon came and stood in the kitchen door.
“What, Anita?” she asked gently.
“El Rey,” answered the old woman, “he calls and calls and none come to him. He, too, needs 35 help, Corazon. Why not take him for a run along the plain? It will help you both.”
For a long time the girl stood, considering.
“I have not cared to ride lately, Anita,” she said, “but you are right. El Rey should not be left to fret.”
She stepped back in the house, then came out, and she had added nothing to her attire save her daddy’s belt and guns. Without these she never left the Holding now.
Bareheaded, slender, she was a thing of beauty, and there was a quiet command about her which subdued the great El Rey himself, the proudest horse in all the Valley, outside of Courtrey’s Ironwoods, Bolt and Arrow.
Between these three horses there was much comment and discussion, though they had never been tested out together.
She found a bridle on a corral post, a strong affair of rawhide, heavily ornamented with silver, its bit a Spanish spade. Without this she could not hold the stallion, and he was no pet to come at her caressing call of the double notes.
Only Jim Last himself had ever tamed El Rey to do his bidding by word of mouth. The horse had had one master. He would never have another.
Even now, when Tharon bridled him and 36 opened the big gate, promising him his long-desired flight, he seemed not to see her, his beautiful big eyes looked through, beyond her, as if he sought another. There was some one for whom he waited, listened.
From a block of wood set in the yard the girl gathered the rein tight in her hand, balanced a moment, and leaped up astride the shining back.
With a snort like a pistol shot El Rey flung up his great head, leaped into the air and was gone. Around the corner of the adobe house he went, out across the trampled yard, and away along the open to the south, running level and free. With the first sink-and-lift Tharon had slipped back a full span. Now she wound her fingers in the white cloud of mane that flailed her face and edged up, inch by inch. When her knees were well up on the huge shoulders that worked beneath them powerfully, she gathered the reins, one in each hand, leaned down along the outstretched neck and let the great king run. The wind sang by her ears in a rising whine, the green prairie was a flowing sea beneath her, the thunder of the pounding hoofs was stupendous music. Tharon shut her eyes and rode, and for the first time since Jim Last’s death a sense of joy rose in her like a tide.
She had ridden El Rey before, many times. She 37 had felt him sail beneath her down the open prairies and always it was so, as if the earth slid by, as if the note of the wind lifted minute by minute. She had wondered often about this––how long it would continue to rise with El Rey’s rising speed, how long before he would reach a maximum above which he could not go, a place where the singing note would remain fixed.
She had never known him reach that point. Always he could go faster. Always he had reserves.
Far out ahead she saw a bunch of cattle feeding. They were lazily circling in a wide arc, content under the beaming sun. Near them sat a rider on a buckskin horse, Bent Smith on Golden. This Golden was one of the prides of Last’s Holding. Bigger than Drumfire or Redbuck, he ranked next to El Rey himself in speed, for his slim legs, slapped smartly with the distinguishing finger marks on the outside of the knee, were long and shapely, his back short-coupled and strong, his withers low, his narrow hips high. Tharon bore hard on El Rey’s bit, leaned her body to the left, and they swung in toward Bent and Golden in a beautiful sweeping curve that brought the cowboy up in his stirrups with his hat a-wave above him.
“Good girl!” he yelled with leaping gladness 38 as the superb pair shot by. “Good girl! Go to it!”
Tharon loosed a hand long enough to wave back and was gone, on down the sloping land toward the country of the Black Coulee, her dark skirts fluttering at her knees, the two heavy guns pounding her thighs at every jump.
It was a long time before El Rey came down from his sweeping flight.
He had been too long holden in cramping bars. The free winds and the rolling earth filled him with a sort of madness. He ran with joy and the surety of unbounded power.
The rider, left far behind, watched them anxiously for a time, thought of following, glanced at his cattle, remembered the gun man’s heritage and turned to his business.
The sun was well down over the western Rockface when Tharon and El Rey came back to Last’s Holding. The riders were bringing in the cattle, dust was rising in clouds above the moving masses. From the ranch house came the savory smells of cooking.
NEAR THEM SAT A RIDER ON A BUCKSKIN HORSE
The stallion was limber as a willow. He tossed his handsome head and his eyes were bright as stars set in his silver face. Life was at high tide in him, flowing magnificently. Tharon, her cheeks whipped into pulsing colour by the wind and the 39 bounding speed, her tawny mane loosed from its bands and flying in a cloud behind her, smoothed back from her face, looked wild as an Indian. As she drew up and sat watching the work of the evening, she smiled for the first time in many days, and Jack Masters, passing, felt his heart leap with gladness.
When the mistress of Last’s was sad, so were her people.
When the last big corral gate had swung to and the boys turned in to unsaddle, she touched El Rey with a toe and went over among them.
“Line up the horses, boys,” she said, “I want to see them all together once more. Somethin’ came back in me today––somethin’ I been missing for a long time. I’ll be myself again.”
Billy turned Redbuck to face her, dropped his rein. Curly rode up on Drumfire. These two were red roans, dead matches. Bent brought Golden and stood him alongside. From far at the back of the corral they called Conford and Jack, who came wondering, the former on Sweetheart, true sister of El Rey, almost as big, almost as fast, almost as beautiful.
Silver-blue roan, silver-pointed, slim, graceful, springy, she had not a single dark spot on her except the sharp black bars of the finger marks outside her knees. 40
“You darlin’!” said Tharon as she wheeled in line.
Then came Jack on Westwind, and he was another buckskin, paler than Golden, most marvelously pointed in pure chestnut brown. His finger marks were brown instead of black––the only horse at the Holding so distinguished, for no matter of what shade or colour, in all the others these peculiar marks were jet black. Five splendid creatures they stood and pounded the ringing earth, tossed their heads and waited, though they had all been far that day and it was feeding time.
Out in the horse corrals there were many more of their breed, slim, wiry horses, toughened and hardened by long hours and daily work, but these were the flower of Last’s, the prized favourites.
For a long time Tharon sat and watched them, noting their perfect condition, their glistening skins, their shining hoofs, many of which were striped, another characteristic.
“I don’t believe,” she said at last, “that there’s a bunch of horses in Lost Valley to come nigh ’em. Ironwoods or anything else––I’d back th’ Finger Marks.”
“So would we,” said Conford quietly, “though we’ve seen th’ Ironwoods run––a little.”
“That’s th’ word, Burt,” said Curly, “a little. 41 Who of us has ever seen Courtrey let Bolt run like he wanted to? Not a darned one. I’ve seen that big bay devil pull till th’ blood dripped from his mouth.”
“Sure,” put in Masters, “I’ve seen that, too––but I was lyin’ up on th’ Cup Rim oncet, watchin’ a couple mavericks fer funny work, an’ Courtrey an’ Wylackie Bob come along down that way on Bolt an’ Arrow––an’ they wasn’t a-holdin’ them then. Lord, Lord, how they was goin’! Two long red streaks as level as your hand, an’ I swear my heart came up in my throat to see ’em, an’ I almost hollered. It was pretty work––pretty work, an’ no mistake.”
Tharon looked over at him.
“Fast as El Rey, Jack?”
“Who could tell?” said the man. “I know it was some speed, an’ that is all.”
The girl struck a hand on the king’s shoulder so passionately that he jumped and snorted.
“Some day,” she said tensely, “El Rey will run th’ Ironwoods off their feet––an’ I’ll run th’ heart out of their master, damn him! Put th’ horses out. It’s supper time.”
She threw her right limb over the stallion’s neck swiftly and with lithe grace, and slid abruptly to the ground.
As she did so there came the sound of hoofs on 42 the hard earth at the corner of the house, and a stranger came sharply into sight.
He drew up and nodded. Conford, just turning away, turned quickly back and came forward.
“Howdy,” he said.
The man, tall, lean, dark, returned the salute with another nod.
He was covered with dust, as if he had ridden far and been a long time coming. His clothes were much the worse for wear, but they were mostly leather, which takes wear standing, as it were. The wide hat pulled low over his piercing dark eyes, was ornamented with a vanity of silver.
The riding cuffs at his wrists were studded profusely with the same metal, as was the wide belt that spanned his narrow waist.
He wore a three days’ beard, and a black moustache dropped its long points to the edge of his jaw. Black hair showed beneath the hat. He was a remarkable figure, even in Lost Valley, and he commanded attention.
He carried the customary two guns of the country, and he bestrode a horse that was as noticeable as himself.
This horse was no denizen of Lost Valley. It was an utter alien. Its colour was a dingy black, as if it had recently been through fire, its coat rough and unkempt. Its long head was heavy and 43 slug-like, its nose of the type known among horsemen as Roman. It was roughly built, raw-boned and angular, and of so stupendous a size that the man atop, who was six foot tall himself, seemed small by comparison.
However, for all its ugliness, it possessed a seeming of vast power, a suggestion of great strength.
The stranger looked the group over with his keen, hard eyes, and spoke in a slow drawl.
“I reckon,” he said, “I’m a-ridin’ th’ wrong trail. I hain’t expected hyar.”
And turning abruptly, without another word, he jogged away around the house and started down the long slope already greying with the coming night.
The foreman and the five punchers clamped over to the corner of the kitchen and watched him in speculative silence. Tharon came along and stood by Billy, her hand on the boy’s arm. To Billy that sober touch confused the distances, set the strange rider dancing on the slope.
“H’m,” said Conford, his grey eyes narrow, “come from far an’s goin’ somewheres. I’ll watch that duck. He looks like he’s a record man to me.”
At supper there was much speculation about the stranger. 44
“I’ll lay a month’s pay he come from Texas,” said Billy, casting a side glance at his pal Curly, “them long lankys usually do. An’ somehow it shows in their eyes, sort o’ fierce an’––”
“Billy,” said Tharon severely, “if I was Curly I’d take a fall out of you. He can do it, you know that an’ I know it.”
“Thanks, Miss Tharon,” said Curly in his soft Southern drawl, “if you feel that-a-way about it, w’y, I don’t care what no little yellow-headed whipper-snapper from up Wyomin’ way says to th’ contrary.”
Billy was a bit abashed, but he stubbornly supported his contention that the stranger was a bad-man from Texas.
“Plenty bad-men right here in Lost Valley,” said the girl quietly, “an’ th’ breed ain’t dyin’ out as I can see. Th’ settlers need a new leader––now that Jim Last’s gone.” And she fell to playing absently with her fork upon the cloth.
The boys changed the subject hurriedly.
“I found a dead brandin’ fire in th’ Cup Rim yesterday, Burt,” said Masters, “quite a scrabbled space around it. Looked like some one’d branded several calves.”
“Don’t doubt it,” said the foreman. “Careful as we are there’s always likely to be stragglers. 45 An’ to be a straggler’s to be a goner in this man’s land.”
“Unless he belongs t’ Last’s,” said the irrepressible Billy. “I’ll lay that fer every calf branded by Courtrey’s gang we’ll get back two.”
“Billy,” said Tharon again, “Jim Last wasn’t a thief. Neither will his people be thieves. For every calf branded by Courtrey, one calf wearin’ th’ J. L.––an’ one calf only. We don’t steal, but we won’t lose.”
“You bet your boots an’ spurs throwed in, we won’t,” said the boy fervently.
As they rose from the table with all the racket of out-door men there came once more the sound of a horse’s hoofs on the hard earth outside.
Last’s Holding was a vast sounding-board. No one on horseback could come near without advertising his arrival far ahead.
This time it was no stranger. Tharon went to the western door to bid him ’light.
It was John Dement from down at the Rolling Cove. He was a thin, worn man, who looked ten years beyond his forty, his face wrinkled by the constant fret and worry of the constant loser.
Tonight he was strung up like a wire. His voice shook when he returned the hearty greetings that met him. 46
“Boys,” he said abruptly, “an’ Tharon––I come t’ tell ye all good-bye.”
“Good-bye! John, what you mean?”
Tharon went forward and put a hand on his arm. Her blue eyes searched his face.
The man stood by his horse and struck a tragic fist in a hard palm.
“That’s it. I give up. I’m done. I’m goin’ down the wall come day––me an’ my woman an’ th’ two boys. Got our duffle ready packed, an’ Lord knows, it ain’t enough t’ heft th’ horses. After five year!”
There was the sound of the hopeless tears of masculine failure in the man’s tragic voice. His fingers twisted his flabby hat.
“Hold up,” said Conford, pushing nearer, “straighten out a bit, Dement. Now, tell us what’s up.”
“Th’ last head––th’ last hoof––run off last night as we was comin’ in with ’em a leetle mite late. Had ben up Black Coulee way, an’ it got dark on us. Just as we got abreast o’ th’ mouth of th’ Coulee, where th’ poplars grow, three men come a-boilin’ out. They was on fast horses––o’ course––an’ right into th’ bunch they went, hell-bent. Stampeded the hull lot. You know my bunch’d got down t’ about a hundred head––don’t know what I ben a-hangin’ on fer, only a man hates 47 t’ give up an’ own hisself beat out. An’ my woman––she’s a fighter.
“She kep’ standin’ at my back like, oh, like––well, she kep’ a-sayin’ ‘We’ll win out yet, John, you see. Right’ll win ev’ry time.’ You see we are just ready to get th’ patent on our land. She couldn’t give that up, seems like. All this time gone an’ nothin’ gained. So we ben a-hangin’ on when things went from bad to worse. Th’ herd’s been a-goin’ down an’ down. Calves with their tongues slit so’s they’d lose their mothers––fed up in some coulee by hand an’ branded. Knowed ’em by my own colour cattle, w’ich I drove in here five year ago––th’ yellers.
“Mothers killed outright an’ th’ calves branded. Oh, I know it all––but what could I do? Kep’ gettin’ poorer an’ poorer. Couldn’t afford enough riders t’ protect ’em. Then couldn’t afford any an’ tried t’ make it go as th’ boys got older. Courtrey, damn him, wants me offen that piece o’ land a-fore th’ patent’s granted. Him with his twenty thousan’ acres of Lost Valley now! An’ how’d he get it? False entry, that’s what! How many men’s come in here, took up land, ‘sold out’ to Courtrey an’ went? Or didn’t go. A lot of ’em didn’t go. We all know that. An’ who dares to speak in a whisper about it? Th’ men that did wouldn’t go––never––nowheres.” 48
There was the bitterness of utter defeat and hatred in the shaking voice. The tree-toads, beginning their nightly chorus from the wet places below the cottonwoods, emphasized the dreariness of the recital, the ancient hopelessness of the weak beneath the heel of the oppressor.
Dement ceased speaking and stood in silhouette against the last yellow-and-black of the dead sunset. The protruding apple in his hawk-like throat worked up and down grotesquely.
For a long moment there was utter silence.
Then he began again.
“I knowed I wasn’t welcome in th’ Valley when I hadn’t ben here more’n six months. Th’ first leetle string o’ fence I put up fer corrals went down, mysterious, as fast as I could fix it. Th’ woman’s garden was broke open an’ trampled to dust by cattle, drove in. Winter ketched us with mighty leetle t’ eat in th’ way o’ truck. Next year she guarded it herself some nights, sleepin’ by day, an’ oncet she took a shot at some one that come prowlin’ around. They let her fence alone after that, but what’d they do outside? Killed all th’ hogs we had one night an’ piled ’em in a heap in th’ front door yard! That was hint enough, but I kep’ a-thinkin’ that ef we behaved decent like, an’ minded our own business we sartainly must win out. We did,” he added grimly after a 49 little pause, “like hell. An’ how many others of th’ settlers has gone through th’ like? We ain’t no tin gods ourselves, I own, but we got t’ fight fire with fire. Only I ain’t got no more light-wood,” he finished quaintly, “I got to quit.”
There was another silence while the tree-toads sang. Then the man held out his hand, hardened and warped with the unceasing toil of those tragic years.
“Good-bye, Tharon,” he said, “I wisht Jim Last was here. With him gone Lost Valley’s in Courtrey’s hand an’ no mistake. He was th’ only man dared face him an’ hold his own. Last’s was th’ only head th’ weaker faction had, its master their only leader. While he lived we had some show, us leetle fellers. Now there ain’t no leader. Th’ ranchers’ll go out fast now. It’ll be a one-man valley.”
In the soft darkness Tharon took the extended hand, held it a moment and laid her other one upon it.
“John Dement,” she quietly said, “I want you to go home an’ bar your house for fight. Fix up your fences, unpack your duffle. In the morning my riders will drive down to your place a hundred head o’ cattle. You put your brand on em. There’s goin’ to be no one-man doin’s in Lost Valley yet awhile––not while Jim Last’s 50 daughter lives. See,” she dropped his hand and pointed to the east where the tall pine lifted to the stars, “out yonder there’s a cross at Jim Last’s grave––an’ there’s my mark on it. Th’ settlers have a leader still––an’ I name myself that leader. I’m set against Courtrey, now an’ forever. I mean to fight him t’ th’ last inch o’ ground in Lost Valley, th’ last word o’ law, th’ last drop o’ blood, both his an’ mine. You go down among ’em––th’ settlers––an’ take ’em that word from me. Tell ’em Jim Last’s daughter stands facin’ Courtrey, an’ she’ll need at her back t’ fight him every man in Lost Valley that ain’t a coward.”
When the settler had gone, incoherent and half-incredulous, Conford drew a long breath and looked at his mistress in the dusk.
“Tharon, dear,” he said so gently that his words were like a caress “you’re jest a-breakin’ your riders’ hearts. You’re heapin’ anxiety on us mountain-high. Now what on earth’ll we do?”
Young Billy Brent pushed near and slapped a hand against a doubled fist. His eyes were sparkling like harbour lights, his voice was like the sound of running fire.
“Do?” he cried. “Do? We’ll stand behind her so tight they can’t see daylight through, an’ we’ll fight with an’ for her every inch o’ that way, 51 every word o’ that law, every drop o’ that blood! Who says Last’s ain’t on th’ map in Lost Valley?” Tharon smiled and touched him again.
“Billy,” she said softly, “you’re after my own heart. Now get to bed. I want t’ think.”