It was Wan Lee, Old Pete’s bête noir, who found them there and ran shouting through the crowd of belated players in the saloon’s big room, his pig-tail flying, his almond eyes popping, to upset a table and batter on his master’s door and scream that the “bullos” were here, “allesame lone,” and that there was blood all spattered on the hind one’s rump!
CHAPTER VIII
WHITE ELLEN
So old Pete, the snow-packer, had paid the price of gallantry. The bullet he had averted from Tharon Last’s young head that day in the Golden Cloud but sheathed itself to wait for him. All the Valley knew it. Not a soul beneath the Rockface but knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who, or whose agents, had followed Pete that night to the Cañon Country. Whispers went flying about as usual, and as usual nothing happened.
When the news of this came to Last’s Holding the mistress sat down at the big desk in the living room, laid her tawny head on her arms and wept.
There was in her a new softness, a new feeling of misery––as if one had wantonly killed a rollicking puppy before her eyes. Those tears were Old Pete’s requiem. She dried them quickly, however, and set another notch to her score with Courtrey.
It was then that the waiting game ceased abruptly.
Tharon, riding on El Rey, went in to Corvan. 188 She tied the horse at the Court House steps and went boldly in to the sheriff’s office.