“Yes,” said Ellen, wearily, “like that.”
“Then by th’ Eternal!” swore Cleve softly, “here you’ll stay if it takes all th’ law in th’ United States to keep you here. I’ll file your answer tomorrow––protest to th’ last word!”
And he rode into Corvan, only to find that Courtrey and Courtrey’s influence had been there before him, that a cold sense of disaster seemed to permeate the town and all those whom he met therein.
He found the “Court House crowd” tight-lipped and careful.
And Ben Garland set the day for trial at a ridiculously early date, for all the world as if the thing had been cut and dried at some secret conclave.
Courtrey was playing his game with a daring hand, true to his name and habit.
Dusk was falling in Lost Valley. The long blue shadows had swept out from the Rockface, covering first the homesteads under the Wall, then 221 the great grazing stretches, then Corvan, then the open levels again, then the mouth of Black Coulee and lastly sweeping eastward to hush the life at Last’s Holding in that soft, sweet quiet which comes with the day’s work done.
Out at the corrals Billy and Conford, Jack and Bent and Curly, put the finishing touches to the routine of precaution which the Holding never relaxed, day or night.
Inside the dusky living room where the bright blankets glowed on the walls and the ollas hung in the deep window places, Tharon Last sat at the little old melodeon and played her nameless tunes. She did not look at the yellowed keys. Instead her blue eyes, deep and glowing, wandered down along the southern slopes and she was lost in unconscious dreams. Once again she saw the trim figure of the forest man as she had seen him come stiffly into her range of vision that day in Corvan. She recalled his quiet eyes, dark and speaking, the odd way his hair went straight back from his forehead. She wondered why she should think of him at all.
He was against her––was a force that played directly against all her plans of life, her precepts. Moreover, she had told him she feared he was soft––like a woman––some women––that there was in him a lack of the straight man-courage 222 which was the only standard in Lost Valley.