And the killer on the Court House steps?
He stood where he was and looked with blazing eyes over the motley crowd beneath him. Steptoe Service made a step toward him, looked round, wet his lips and thought better of it.
And then, in another second, the crowd was a mob and the mob was the Vigilantes. Some one took Ellen from Cleve’s shoulder with careful hands and carried her away. Then some one reached down and picked him up bodily. Another joined, and they set him on their shoulders, lifting him high. The inarticulate mob cry swelled and deepened and rose to a different sound––a shout that gathered volume and roared out across the spaces where Courtrey rode with a menace, a portent. 266
With one accord the mob started on a journey around Corvan.
White as Ellen, Cleve Whitmore rode that triumphant journey, his eyes still blazing, his lips tight. The town went wild. Public feeling came out on every hand. Daring took the weak, hope took the oppressed, and they called Courtrey’s reign right there. For three uproarious hours the bar-tenders could not wipe off their bars.
A new regime was ushered in––and she who had been its sponsor was not there to see it.
When the hour of Change was striking for Corvan and all Lost Valley, Tharon Last, who had set it to strike, was scaling False Ridge in the Cañon Country. Grim, ash-pale with effort, her blue eyes shining, she climbed the Secret Way that few had ever found.