“Good girl!” he yelled with leaping gladness 38 as the superb pair shot by. “Good girl! Go to it!”
Tharon loosed a hand long enough to wave back and was gone, on down the sloping land toward the country of the Black Coulee, her dark skirts fluttering at her knees, the two heavy guns pounding her thighs at every jump.
It was a long time before El Rey came down from his sweeping flight.
He had been too long holden in cramping bars. The free winds and the rolling earth filled him with a sort of madness. He ran with joy and the surety of unbounded power.
The rider, left far behind, watched them anxiously for a time, thought of following, glanced at his cattle, remembered the gun man’s heritage and turned to his business.
The sun was well down over the western Rockface when Tharon and El Rey came back to Last’s Holding. The riders were bringing in the cattle, dust was rising in clouds above the moving masses. From the ranch house came the savory smells of cooking.
NEAR THEM SAT A RIDER ON A BUCKSKIN HORSE
The stallion was limber as a willow. He tossed his handsome head and his eyes were bright as stars set in his silver face. Life was at high tide in him, flowing magnificently. Tharon, her cheeks whipped into pulsing colour by the wind and the 39 bounding speed, her tawny mane loosed from its bands and flying in a cloud behind her, smoothed back from her face, looked wild as an Indian. As she drew up and sat watching the work of the evening, she smiled for the first time in many days, and Jack Masters, passing, felt his heart leap with gladness.