With the courier’s departure he rode back to the Holding and told Tharon and Conford what he had done.
“These men are the best to be had,” he said, “and they will go anywhere on earth for money.”
But Tharon frowned and struck a fist into a soft palm.
“What you mean?” she cried, “by takin’ my work out of my hands like this? I won’t have it! I won’t wait!”
“What I meant when I caught your bridle that 215 day in the glade,” answered the man, “to stop you from bloodshed.”
Then he went back to his cabin and his interrupted work and set himself to wait in patience for the return of Drake.
But in Lost Valley a leaven was rising. It had begun insidiously to work with the appearance of Kenset in Tharon’s band at Courtrey’s doorstep. It burst up like a mushroom with a chance remark made by Lola of the Golden Cloud––Lola, who had seen, since that night in spring when Tharon Last stood in the door and promised to “get” her father’s killer, that Courtrey was slipping from her. A woman like Lola is hard to deceive.
Much experience had taught her to feel the change of winds in the matter of allegiance.
She knew that surely and swiftly this man had gone down the path of unreasoning love, that he would give anything he possessed, do anything possible, to win for himself this slim mistress of Last’s Holding.