She had promised––and the Law was waiting––the big Law of below.
She was Jim Last’s daughter still.
She leaned closer to El Rey’s neck––held her two guns ready––and rode with the very wind.
She was near now––she could see Courtrey’s face, waxen white but fearless, his dark eyes turned back toward her in a sort of desperate admiration.... Courtrey loved strength and courage and all things wild and fierce. She could see Bolt’s staring eyeballs, his open mouth, gasping and piteous. One more moment––another––yet one more––then she rose in her stirrups and fired straight at the broad bay temple, shining and black with sweat!
The great gallant Ironwood went down in a huge arc––first his beautiful head, then the sinking arch of his neck, then the shoulders that had worked so wondrously. He rolled on his back like a hoop, his iron-shod hoofs spinning for one 294 spectacular moment in the air. Then he lay at sudden ease, his still fluttering nose pointing directly back the way he had come.
With the first catching stumble of the true forefeet, the man on his back had shot out of the saddle and far ahead. He landed twenty feet away and squarely on his head and shoulders. Like Bolt, Courtrey’s body turned a complete somersault––and lay still, at sudden peace.
Tharon Last and El Rey went on like an arrow––they could not stop.
When at last she did draw the great king down she was far and away from the spot. She turned her head, panting and dizzy, and looked back.... She could see the prone red heap that was Bolt––a little way beyond that other, lesser, darker heap....
For a long time she sat on El Rey’s heaving back and stared unseeingly at the green earth where the short grasses quivered in the little wind.
There was a deathly white line about her lips, but her eyes blazed with the fire that had characterized them from birth, the flickering, unfathomable flame that came and went.