Tharon of Lost Valley

by Vingie E. Roe

How she had come to it through the tortuous cuts and passes was a marvel of homing instinct––the heart that homed to its object. It had seemed to her all along this strange, tense journey, that she had had no will of her own, that she had held her breath and shut her eyes, as it were, and gone forward in obedience to some strange thing within that said, “turn here,” “go thus.” Billy following behind, watched her with tight lips and a secret 267 wonder. As she had told him she would “go straight, Mary willing,” so she had gone straight––and it seemed, truly, as if it were right that she should, no matter how his heart ached to see this thing.

Verily there was something supernatural about it all, something uncanny.

If it had been he, Billy, whom Tharon loved, and had he lain, wounded in the Cup o’ God, would the girl have been given this blind instinct for direction? Would she have gone as unerringly to the Secret Way?

Nay––there must be something in the old saying that, for every heart in the world there was its true mate.

Tharon had found hers in Kenset.

But where would he ever find his? The boy shook his fair head hopelessly at the sliding floors. For all perfection there must be sacrifice. He was the sacrifice for Tharon’s perfection––a willing one, so help him!

That they had found the Secret Way across False Ridge was perfectly plain, for here in the living rock before them were marks, the first marks they had found in the Cañons. Thin, small crosses, cut in the stone of the walls, began to lead upward from the last liftings cut straight up the Rockface of False Ridge itself. It seemed, to 268 look at the dim traces, that no living thing without wings could scale that steep and forbidding cliff, but when they tried to climb, they found that each step had been set with artful cunning. The set of steps followed the form of a “switchback,” working from right to left, and always rising a little. False Ridge itself, a towering, mighty spine, came down in a swiftly dropping ridge from somewhere in the high upper country at the west of all the cañons. It was known to lead deceptively down among the cuts and passes, as if it went straight down to the lower levels, and to end abruptly in a precipice that none could descend or climb. On all its rugged sides there were treacherous slopes which looked hard enough to support a man, but which, once stepped on, gave sickeningly away to slide and slither for a hundred feet straight down to some abrupt edge, where they fell in dusty cataracts to blind basins and walled cups below.

In these blind cups were many skeletons of deer and other animals that had ventured down from the upper world, never to return. Somewhere up here must be the bones of Cañon Jim.

But the Secret Way was safe. Under every carefully worked out step there was solid stone, for every handhold there was a firm stake set. These stakes were old for the most part, but 269 here and there had been set in a new one––Courtrey’s work, they made no doubt, for Courtrey was said to know the Cañons. It took Tharon and Billy two hours to make the climb, stopping from time to time to rest. At such times the boy stood close and took her hand. It was grim work looking down the sheer face, and one might well be excused for holding a hand for steadiness. And it would soon be the time for no more touches of this girl’s fair self for Billy.

And so, climbing steadily and in comparative silence, these two, whose hearts were strong, came at last to the top of False Ridge––a thin knife-blade of stone––and looked abruptly and suddenly down on the other side.