On the small table that was to do duty as a desk in the corner between the southwest window and the fireplace he stacked neatly a mass of literature, all marked with the same peculiar shield of the pine trees and the big U. S. that shone always on his breast.
To the Drakes these things were of quick interest, but they asked no questions.
When the last thing had been done to the cabin they set to work and built a smaller cabin for the good brown horse which Kenset had bought far 117 down to the south and west in the Coast Country, for Sam Drake told him that Lost Valley locked its doors to all the world in winter. He would house his only friend as he housed himself.
When the Drakes, father and sons, were gone back down to Corvan for good, Kenset stretched himself, physically and mentally, and began his life in the last frontier.
He began to be out from dawn to dark riding the ridges, exploring the wooded slopes, the boldly upsweeping breasts of the nameless mountains, making friends with the rugged land. It was a beautiful country, hushed and silent, save for the soft song of the pines, the laughter of streams that ran to the Valley, cold as snow and clear as wind. Strange flowers nodded on tall stems in glade and opening, peeped from the flat earth by stone and moss-bed. Few birds were here, though squirrels were plentiful.
Sometimes he saw a horseman sitting on some slant watching him intently. These invariably rode rapidly away on being discovered, not troubling to return his salute of a hand waved high above him.
“Funny tribe,” he told himself, half puzzled, half irritated, “their manners seem to be peculiarly their own. As witness the offered meal so 118 calmly ‘taken back’ by the young highway-woman of Last’s Holding.”
That had rankled. Sane as Kenset was, as cool and self-contained, he could not repress a cold prickle of resentment at that memory.
He had gone to the Holding in such good faith, actuated by a lively desire to see Tharon again after that one amazing meeting at Baston’s steps, and he had been so readily received at first, so coolly turned out at last. But he had not forgotten the look in the girl’s blue eyes, nor the disarming smile which had seemed to make it reasonable.
She merely did not hold with law, and wanted him to have no false impressions. This incident furnished him with more food for thought than he was aware of in those first long days when he rode the silent forest.