“I tol’ you we couldn’t be friends!” she cried, her eyes blazing with sudden fire, “there ain’t no manner of use a-tryin’.”
Kenset, springing forward, caught El Rey’s bit. The stallion reared and struck, but he held him down.
“There is use, Tharon,” he panted. “It’s vital! Since that day on Baston’s steps, when you backed out past me I have had you in my mind––my thoughts by day and night––there is use, and I’ll keep your hands from blood––Courtrey’s or any other––if it takes my life––so help me God!”
The girl leaned down and her blue eyes blazed in his face.
“An’ make me false to th’ crosses on Jim Last’s stone?” she cried. “No––not you or anybody else––could do that trick! Let go!”
The next moment she had whirled out from the flickering shade of the willows and was gone around toward the north––there was only the sound of hoofs ringing on the earth. Kenset, left alone where the Silver Hollow bubbled softly above its snowy sands, passed a trembling hand across his eyes and stood as in a trance. 179
What did it mean? What had he promised? What vital emotion had gripped him that his usually quiet tongue had rushed into that torrential speech that dealt with life and death? What was Tharon Last to him?
A figure of the old West! A romantic gun woman with her weapons on her hips! A rider of wild horses!
Slowly, as if he had gained an added weight of years, he reined Captain and swung himself up. He rode east from the spring toward the lacy and far-reaching skirts of the forest, and for the first time he saw the rolling country with tragic eyes.
It held deep issues––life and death and the passing or continuing of régimes and and dynasties––but it was a wondrous country, and, come good or bad, it had become his own. He swung around in his saddle and looked far back across the Valley. He saw the golden light on its uncounted acres, the shadow falling at the foot of the great Rockface, the mighty Wall itself with the silver ribbon of the Vestal’s Veil falling straight down from the upper rim, the distant town, looking always like a dull gem in a dark setting, and a thrill shot to his heart.