This was love! This dreary colour of the golden sunlight of noon in the high country––this dumb ache that locked his throat––this high courage that brought him serving love’s object to the bitter-sweet end. How long he stood there he did not know. His heart was dead, like the weathered stone country about him. He knew that he heard Tharon’s voice after a while, that golden voice which had been the bells of Last’s, in rapid question and answer––and Kenset’s voice, too, weak and slow, but filled with joy unspeakable. It was lilting and soft, a lover’s voice, a victor’s voice, 272 and presently he caught a few of the broken words that passed between them––“Clean! Clean! Oh, Tharon, darling––there is no blood on these dear hands! Tell me you did not kill Courtrey!”
He heard Tharon answer in the negative.
And then all the world fell about him, it seemed, for a gun cracked from the trees beyond him and a wasp stung his cheek.
In one instant the sunlight became brilliant again, the joy came back in the day. Here was something more to do for Tharon, a new task at hand when he had thought his tasks were all but done.
He whirled, looked, drew his six-gun and began firing at the man who stood in plain sight just where he had stepped into the Cup from the mouth of a little blind cut where the stream went out in noise and lost itself.
This was a big man, sinister and cold and dark, a half-breed Pomo of Courtrey’s gang, a still-hunter who did a lot of the dirty work which the others refused. Billy had seen him before, knew his record.
Now they two stood face to face and fired at each other swiftly, coolly. He saw the half-breed stagger once, knew that he had touched him somewhere. And then a sound cut into the snapping of the shots, a sound that was like nothing he had 273 ever heard in all his life before, a sound as savage as the roar of a she-bear whose cub is killed before her eyes. As he flung away his empty gun and snatched the other, he moved enough to bring into his range of vision Tharon Last, standing over Kenset, her mouth open in that savage cry.
Then before he could draw and fire again he saw the prettiest piece of work he had ever witnessed. He saw the gun woman crouch and stoop, saw her hands flash in Jim Last’s famous backhand flip, saw the red flame spurt from her hips, and the Pomo half-breed flung up his hands and fell in a heap, his face in the grass. He did not move. Only a long ripple passed over his body. He was still as the ageless rocks, as much a part of eternity. For a moment Billy stood, the gun hanging in his hand. Then he knew that Tharon was coming toward him––that her hands were on his shoulders––her deep eyes piercing his with a look that meant more to him than all the earth beside. It was the fierce, mother-look of changeless affection, the companion to that savage cry. She held him in a pinching grip, and made sure that he was unhurt, save for that scratch on the cheek.
“If he had killed you, Billy,” she said tensely, “I’d a-gone a-muck an’ shot up th’ whole of Lost Valley.” 274
And the boy knew in his heart she spoke the solemn truth.