Tharon of Lost Valley

by Vingie E. Roe

In the town itself there was a stir. Courtrey was there, and Wylackie Bob, and Black Bart and Arizona, a bunch of dark, evil men in all surety.

The Ironwoods were in evidence everywhere, but strange to say, there were no Finger Marks. Not a man from the Holding was in town.

When Cleve and Ellen, alone together, rode in, it lacked yet a half hour of the time set for trial. There was no place to go but Baston’s, so they dismounted at the hitch-rack. Ellen, swaying on her feet, looked all around with her big pale eyes, and when she saw Courtrey some distance away she put a hand to her heart as simply as a hurt child. She was a pitiful creature in her long 256 white dress, for she had ridden in on an old sidesaddle, and she shook out the crumpled folds in a wistful attempt to look proper. On her head was the inevitable sunbonnet of slats and calico.

As she went up the steps of the store with Cleve, Lola of the Golden Cloud, blazing like a comet in her red-and-black came face to face with her purposely. What was in Lola’s head none would ever know, but she wanted to see Courtrey’s wife.

As they met they stopped dead still, these two women who loved one man, and the look that passed between them was electric, deep, revealing. They stood so long staring into each other’s eyes that Cleve, frowning, plucked Ellen by the sleeve and made to push forward.

But as suddenly as a flash of light Lola reached out her two hands and caught Ellen’s in a tight clasp that only women know, the swift, clinging clasp of the secret fellowship of those who suffer.

For one tense moment she held them, while Ellen swayed forward for all the world as if she would sink in upon the deep full breast of this wanton whom she had hated! Then the spell broke, they fell apart with a rush, Lola swung out and went down the steps, while Ellen obediently followed Cleve into Baston’s store, where she sat on a nail keg and waited in a dull lethargy. Outside Courtrey, who had witnessed the thing from 257 across the street, slapped his thigh and laughed uproariously.

It was a funny sight to him. But Lola’s beautiful black eyes blazed across at him with a light that none had ever seen before in their inscrutable depths.

Then the hour struck, and all Corvan, it seemed to Cleve, strung out toward the Court House. This was to be in open court––a spectacle. From somewhere in the adobe outskirts of the town came Ellen’s serving women, most of them, whom Cleve had sent in early in the day. They fell in with her and so, with only the brother who had never failed her and these dusky women of the silent tongues to back her, Ellen Courtrey went to her crucifixion as truly as though she had been one of the two thieves on Golgotha.

At the sight of Courtrey across the big bare room she went whiter than she was, if such a thing were possible, and slid weakly into the chair placed for her.