It was a thing beyond her ken, something ordered by fate. She must go on, blindly as running waters, regardless of all that drowned.
But she loosed her hand from Billy’s, leaned to his shoulder, put her arm about his neck and drew his face to hers. Softly, tenderly, she kissed him upon the lips, and she did not know that that was the cruelest thing she had ever done in all her kindly life, did not see the deathly pallor that overspread his face.
“I’m goin’ to th’ Cañon Country, Billy,” she said simply, “to find th’ Cup o’ God an’ Kenset.”
Then she straightened in her saddle and gave El Rey the rein.
It was two of the clock by the starry heavens when these two riders entered the blind opening in the Rockface and disappeared. El Rey, the mighty, tossed his great head and whistled, stamped his hoofs in the dead sift of the silencing floor. He had never before lost sight of the sky, never felt other breath in his nostrils than the keen plain’s wind.
Now he shook himself and halted, went on again, and again halted, to be urged forward by Tharon’s spurred heels in his flanks. Up 240 through the eerie pass they went without speech, for each heart was filled to overflowing with thoughts and fears.
To Billy there was something fateful, bodeful in the dead darkness, the stillness. It seemed to him as if he left forever behind him the open life of the ranges, the gay and careless days of riding after Tharon’s cattle.
For five years he had lived at Last’s, under master and mistress, content, happy. The half-remembered world of below had never called him. The light on the table under the swinging lamp with Tharon’s face therein, the murmur of the stream through her garden, the whisper of the cottonwoods, these had been sufficient. He had, subconsciously, thanked his Maker for these things, had served them with a whole heart. They had been his all, his life. Now the cottonwoods seemed far away, remote, the life of the deep ranch house a thing of long ago. All these things had given way to something that sapped the sunlight from the air, the very blueness from the vaulted skies, something that had come with the quiet man of the pine-tree badge. So Billy sighed in the darkness and sat easily on Drumfire, his slim left hand fidgeting with the swinging rein.
And Tharon was lost, too, in a maze of 241 thoughts. She sat straight as a lance, tense, alive, keen, staring into the narrow bore of the high ceiled cut, thinking feverishly. Was Kenset really alive? Had Courtrey been square with her? Or was he even now lying stiff and stark somewhere in the high cuts, his dark eyes dull with death, that beating heart forever stilled? She caught her breath with a whistling sigh, felt her head swim at the picture. If he was––if––he––was––! She fingered the big guns at her hip and savagery took hold of her. Courtrey’s left wrist to match his right. Then some pretty work about him to make him wait––then a shot through his stomach––he would spit blood and reel, but he wouldn’t die––the butcher!––for a little while, and she would taunt him with Harkness––and Jim. Last shot in the back––with Old Pete––and with––with Kenset––the one man––Oh, the one man in all the world whose quiet smile was unforgettable, whose vital hands were upon hers now, like ghost-hands, would always be upon hers if she lived to be old like Anita or died at dawn today! And Kenset had counseled her to peace! To keep the stain of blood from her own hands! She laughed aloud, suddenly, a ghastly sound that made cold chills go down her rider’s spine, for it was the mad laughter of the blood-lust! Billy knew that Jim Last in his best moments was 242 never so coldly a killer as his daughter was tonight.