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As El Rey rose on his hind feet whirling, that unwavering muzzle whirled also to keep in line[Frontispiece]
Near them sat a rider on a buckskin horse[38]
She talked with Conford who rode beside her and now and then she smiled[104]
In fact Courtrey, burning with the new desire that was beginning to obsess him, was working out a new design[131]

THARON OF LOST VALLEY

1

CHAPTER I

THE GUN MAN’S HERITAGE

Lost Valley lay like a sparkling jewel, fashioned in perfection, cast in the breast of the illimitable mountain country––and forever after forgotten of God.

A tiny world, arrogantly unconscious of any other, it lived its own life, went its own ways, had its own conceptions of law––and they were based upon primeval instincts.

Cattle by the thousand head ran on its level ranges, riders jogged along its trail-less expanses, their broad hats pulled over their eyes, their six-guns at their hips. Corvan, its one town, ran its nightly games, lined its familiar streets with swinging-doored saloons.

Toward the west the Cañon Country loomed behind its sharp-faced cliffs, on the east the rolling ranges, dotted with oak and digger-pine, went 2 gradually up to the feet of the stupendous peaks that cut the sapphire skies.