Then the Vigilantes were gone with jangle of spur and bit-chain, and he was the last to go, standing by Captain in the dim starlight. Tharon stood beside him, and for some unaccountable reason the grim purpose of their acquaintance seemed to drift away, to leave them together, alone under the stars, a man and a maid. Kenset stood for a long moment and looked at the faint outline of her face. She was still in her riding clothes, her 212 head bare with its ribbon half untied in the nape of her slender neck.
The tree-toads were singing off by the springhouse and the cattle in the big corrals made the low, ceaseless night-sounds common to a herd.
The riders were gone, the vaqueros were at their posts around the resting stock, the low adobe house was settling into the quiet of the night.
Miserably Kenset looked at this slip of a girl.
She was strange to him, unfathomable. There were depths beneath the changing blue eyes which appalled him. How would he feel toward her when the thing was done––when she had killed Courtrey?
But she must not be allowed to do it. Not though it took his life.
If she was pledged to this thing, he was no less pledged to its prevention.
He felt a sadness within him as he saw the soft curve of her cheek, the outline of her tawny head.
With an impulse which he could not govern he reached out suddenly and took her hands in his and pressed them against his heart. The pounding of that heart was noticeable through her hands into his.
But he did not speak––he could not.