When the settler had gone, incoherent and half-incredulous, Conford drew a long breath and looked at his mistress in the dusk.
“Tharon, dear,” he said so gently that his words were like a caress “you’re jest a-breakin’ your riders’ hearts. You’re heapin’ anxiety on us mountain-high. Now what on earth’ll we do?”
Young Billy Brent pushed near and slapped a hand against a doubled fist. His eyes were sparkling like harbour lights, his voice was like the sound of running fire.
“Do?” he cried. “Do? We’ll stand behind her so tight they can’t see daylight through, an’ we’ll fight with an’ for her every inch o’ that way, 51 every word o’ that law, every drop o’ that blood! Who says Last’s ain’t on th’ map in Lost Valley?” Tharon smiled and touched him again.
“Billy,” she said softly, “you’re after my own heart. Now get to bed. I want t’ think.”
CHAPTER III
THE MAN IN UNIFORM
Spring was warming swiftly into summer. Where the gently sloping ranges went up in waves and swells toward the uplands at the east, the bright new green had turned to a darker shade. The tiny purple and white flowers had disappeared to give place to sturdier ones of crimson and gold. The veil of water that fell sharply down the face of the Wall for a thousand feet at the Valley’s southern end had thinned to sheerest gauze. In the Cañon Country the snow had disappeared from most of the high points. Red, black, yellow, the great face of the encircling Wall stood in everlasting majesty, looking down upon the level cup of Lost Valley. The unspeakable upheaval of peaks and crags, of cañons and splits and unfathomable depths, was almost a sealed book to the denizens of the Valley. There were those who knew False Ridge.