Tharon of Lost Valley

by Vingie E. Roe

Then the thing proceeded––swiftly, lightly, with smiles on the faces of the crowd.

Old Ben Garland on the judge’s bench, was furtive, scared, nervous, fiddling with his papers and clearing his throat from time to time.

The county clerk at his table made a great 258 deal out of the ceremony of swearing in the witnesses––Wylackie Bob, Black Bart, Arizona and one young Wylackie Indian woman who worked at the Stronghold. Cleve put up only the serving women whom he had sent in, some seven of them, every one of whom loved their mistress with the faithful fidelity of a dog. These women knew Ellen Courtrey as not even the master of the Stronghold himself knew her. They knew her in her idle hours, at her small tasks, at her bedside, in the loving solicitude she displayed for all of them––and they knew her on her knees in prayer, for Ellen had a strange and simple religion, half Catholic and half Pomo paganism.

In the straight-backed chair they gave her Ellen sat like a statue, sweet and still, a thing so obviously good that it seemed even Courtrey himself must weaken to behold her. But not Courtrey. He was on fire with the vision of Tharon Last on the Cup Rim’s floor, shaking her fist toward him in challenge––at Baston’s steps calling him a murderer and worse––at her western door, striking him from her with the strength of a man. He saw the signal fire flaring across the darkened Valley––and nothing on earth or in Heaven could have softened him to the woman who bound him away from this fighting girl, this gun woman whom he was breaking to him slowly but surely. He visioned 259 her in Ellen’s room at the Stronghold––and the breath came fast in his throat.

And Ellen?

Ah, Ellen was thinking of the long past day when this man had found her in the barren rocklands and taken her with the high hand of a lover. She, too, drifted away from the chilling courtroom with its judge and its petty officials.... And then all suddenly she knew that men were talking––and about her. She heard the drone of question and answer––the rambling statements of the stranger, Arizona, accusing her of strange things––of asking him to take her on rides in Courtrey’s absence––of swinging with him nights in the hammock by the watering trough!

She sat and listened with parted lips and large innocent eyes fixed on the man in wonder. Cleve Whitmore clenched his hands until the nails cut deep, but he held his tongue and controlled his face. Only the blazing blue eyes spoke. She knew that Black Bart tried to tell something, that he made some mistake or other and had to begin all over again. There was a long and tedious time in here when she looked away out the window to where the prairie grass was blowing in the little winds and the shadows of clouds drifted across the green expanse.... She was numb and far away with misery. She did not care for anything 260 in all this world. It seemed as if she was detached, aloof, dead already in body as she was in soul.... And then she heard the drawling voice of Wylackie Bob––and he was saying something unspeakable––about her! She listened like one in a trance––then she struggled up from her chair with tragic long arms extended, and the cry that rang from her lips was piteous.

“Buck!” it pealed across the stillness of the crowded room, “Buck!––it ain’t so! Never in this world, Buck! I ben true to you as your shadow! Before God, it ain’t true!”

There was a stir throughout the crowd, a breath that was audible. There were many of the Vigilantes there––a goodly number, all wondering where Tharon Last was, where Kenset was, where were the riders from Last’s. They had expected, what they did not know––something, at any rate, for this seemed somehow a test, a turning point. But there was nothing. They stirred and waited, like a great force heaving in its bed, blind, sluggish, but wakening.

And Ellen, chilled by Courtrey’s sneering face, the cold disapproval of Ben Garland’s striking mallet, sank back in her chair and covered her face with her shaking hands.... She heard some more awful things––then the voice of Dick Burtree beginning soft, low, silver like running 261 waters. She heard it tell of that far away day of her marriage––of the years that followed––of Courtrey’s love for her––of her own gentleness, her beauty, “like the tender sunlight of spring on the snow and the golden sands”––of her service, her loyalty, her love that had “never faltered nor intruded” that “patient obedience to her master had but strengthened and made perfect.” Of the pitiful thing that her life had been this man made a wondrous thing, all sweet with twilights and haloed with service.