For a long moment the Mistress of Last’s stood in profound quiet, as if she could not move. She 234 was held in a trance like those dreadful night-dreams when one is locked in deadly inertia, helpless. The net which had been weaving in Courtrey’s fertile brain was finished, flung, and closing in upon her before she knew of its existence. An awe of his cleverness, his trickery, gripped her in a clutch of ice. The whole fabric of her own desires and plans and purposes seemed to crumple like the white ash in a dead fire, leaving her nothing. She had been out-witted instead of outfought. One more evidence of the man’s baseness, his unscrupulous cunning.
He played his trump card and it was a winner, sweeping the table––for she knew before she finished that difficult reading that she would do anything in all the world to stop that “true bullet” in the heart that had pounded beneath her open palms.... Knew she would break her given word to Jim Last––knew she would forsake the Holding––that she would crawl to Courtrey’s feet and kiss his hand, if only he would spare Kenset of the foothills, would send him out to that vague world of below, never to return!
She swayed drunkenly on her feet for a time that seemed ages long. Then life came back in her with a rush. She broke the nightmare dream and gasped out a broken command to her faithful ones. 235
“Billy!” she said thickly, “Oh, Billy! If you love me, run! Run an’ build a fire––one fire!––only one fire, Billy, dear––out by th’ cottonwoods to th’ left––of th’ Holdin’!”
Then she went and sat limply down on the step at the western door, leaned her head against the deep adobe wall, and fell to weeping as if the very heart in her would wash itself away in tears.
And Billy, numb with anguish but true to the love he bore her, went swiftly out and set that beacon glowing. Its red light flaring against the blue darkness of the falling night seemed like a bodeful omen of sorrow and disaster, of death and failure and despair.
Tharon on the sill roused herself to watch it leap and glow, then turned her deep eyes to where she knew the Stronghold lay.
Presently out upon the distant black curtain of the night there flared that other fire, signal of life to Kenset somewhere in the Cañon Country––and then her lips drew into a thin hard line and she straightened her young form stiffly up, put a hand hard upon her breast.
“A little time, Courtrey!” she whispered to herself, “Jus’ a little time an’ luck, an’ I’ll give you th’ double-cross or die, damn your soul to hell!”
Billy, coming softly in along the adobe wall, 236 caught the whisper, felt rather than heard its meaning, and turned back with the step of a cat.