But Tharon Last forged to his side and gripped his arm in her strong fingers.
“Shut up, Jim Banner,” she said tensely. “You’ve only begun. That’s th’ gun, I make no doubt, an’ Ellen knew it––but if we’re worth killin’ we’ll dig into this harder’n ever. Here’s poor Thomas, makes one more notch on my record. I’m not sayin’ quit! An’ you’re th’ bravest man in Corvan, too!”
At Last’s Holding the Vigilantes stopped for rest and food.
They had been in saddle the better part of forty-eight hours.
Young Paula, José and Anita set up a steaming meal, and they ate like famished men, by relays at the big table in the dining room.
Tharon Last sat quietly at the board’s head throughout the meal, pensive, thinking of Ellen, but grimly planning for the future.
And Billy and Kenset watched her, each with a secret pain at his heart. 211
“Lord, Lord,” said Billy to himself, “she’s listenin’ when he speaks like she never listened to any one before!”
In Kenset’s mind drilled over and over again the ceaseless thought “A hand or a heart––she could hit them both with ease. It’s true, true,––she’s a gun woman! Oh, Tharon, Tharon!” and he did not know he spoke her name beneath his breath.
But other things were crowding forward––he was leaning forward telling that circle of grim, lean faces, that if they could not handle this thing themselves, there were those in the big world of below who could––that there were men of the Secret Service who could find that gun no matter where Courtrey or Ellen hid it, that Lost Valley, no matter what its isolation or its history, was yet in the U. S. A., and could be tamed.