“Yes, law! you young hussy, an’ don’t you fergit that I represent it.”
The girl threw down the sack and flashed both hands on the gun-butts. Courtrey, watching, was half-a-second behind her and stopped with his hands hovering.
“Not much, Courtrey,” she said, “you fast gun man! You’re too slow. An’ this ain’t your game, anyway, not face t’ face. You’re all right on a dark night––an’ from behind. Fine! But you’re a coward. You’re what I called you before––an assassin.”
She was pale as ashes, her eyes narrowed to blazing slits. Jim Last, gun man, was in her like those composite pictures which show the shadow in the substance. There was a gasp from the store porch where Thomas stood with a shaking hand covering his lips. Baston was stuck against 65 his wall like a leech, rigid. These men knew that she tempted death.
Not a man in Lost Valley could have done it and gotten away with it.
Tharon knew it, too, but she did not care.
“An’ now you know what you are, Courtrey. I’ll tell th’ same to you, Step Service. Law! In Lost Valley? Yes, Courtrey’s law! Th’ law of th’ gun alone––th’ law of thieves––th’ law of murderers. An’ you stand for that, you bet! What were you before you took th’ oath of office? Tell me that! Th’ man who killed old Mike McCrea an’ took his cattle down th’ Wall! Th’ whole Valley knows it––but we’ve never dared to say it before!”
The porch was lined with people now. Soft-footed Indians and Mexican vaqueros, sprung from nowhere, cowboys, ranchers, women, they came silently up and listened.
The sheriff’s red face was the colour of liver, purple and mottled with bursting rage. His fingers worked at his sides. He set his lips, and his small eyes never left the girl’s face.
Tharon, crouched a bit, her feet apart, her elbows crooked above her hips, her fingers curled on her gun-butts with nice precision, wet her own pale lips and continued: