Tharon of Lost Valley. Vingie E. Roe
sometimes sitting in the deep east window, when the moon shone, and then they turned out the light and listened in adoring rapture.
For Last’s girl was the rose of the Valley, the one absolutely unattainable woman, and they worshipped her accordingly.
Not that she was aloof. Far from it. In her deep heart the whole bunch of boys had a place; singly and collectively. They were her private property, and she would have been inordinately jealous of any one of them had he slipped allegiance.
As the purple and crimson veils began to drape the eastern ramparts where the forests thickened and swept up the slopes, these riders began to come in across the range, driving the herds before them. Running cattle in Lost Valley was no child’s 11 play. Any small bunch of cows left out at night was not there by dawn. Eternal vigilance was the price of safety, and then they were not always safe. Witness poor Harkness, a year ago shot in the back and left to die alone––his band run off in daylight.
They had found him too late, pitifully propped against a stone, the cigarette, he had tried to light to comfort him, dead in his nerveless hand. Tharon had wept and wept for Harkness, for he had been a good comrade, open-hearted and merry. And deep in her soul she harboured dim longings for justice on his murderer––revenge, if you will.
Tonight she thought of him, somehow, as she went about the supper work along with Anita and José and pretty dark Paula. She stood a moment on the broad stone at the kitchen door, a dish of butter from the springhouse under the poplars in her hand, and watched Billy Brent and Curly bring in a bunch from up Long Meadow way. She thought how bright the spotted cattle looked, how lithe and graceful the men, and then her eyes lighted as they always did when she beheld the horses of Last’s Holding––the horses of the Finger Marks.
Billy rode Redbuck, Curly Drumfire, and they were princes of a royal blood, albeit Nature’s 12 strain alone. Slim, spirited, wiry, eager heads up, manes flying, bright hoofs flashing in the late sunlight, they came home to Last’s after a long day’s work, fresh as when they went out at dawn.
“Nothin’ ever floors them,” Tharon said aloud to herself. “Wonderful creatures.”
She set the butter down on the rock at her feet, cupped her hands about her lips and sent out a keen, clear call, two notes, one rising, one falling. It had a livening, compelling quality.
Instantly Drumfire flung up his head and answered it with a ringing whistle, though he did not lose a stride in the flying curve he was performing to head a stubborn yearling that refused in stiff-tailed arrogance to go into the corrals.
The girl smiled and, stooping, picked up her dish and entered.
It was late before the last straggler was in from the range. The boys washed at the big sink on the porch, and were ready for the hearty fare that steamed in the lamp-lighted room. For the last hour Tharon had been watching the eastern slopes for her father.
“He’s ridin’ late, Anita,” she said anxiously as the men trooped in with the usual jest and laughter.
“He went far, no doubt, Corazon,” said old 13 Anita comfortably. “He goes so fast on El Rey that time as well as distance flies beneath the shining hoofs.”
Anita was like her people, mystic and soft-spoken.
“True,” said the girl gently, “I forget, El Rey is mighty. He went very far I make no doubt. We’ll hear him comin’ soon.”
Then she poured steaming coffee in the cups about the table, smiling down in the eyes upturned to hers. Billy, Curly, Bent Smith, Jack Masters and Conford, the foreman, they all had a love-look for her, and the girl felt it like a circling guerdon. She was grateful for the sense of security that seemed to emanate from her father’s riders, a bit wistful withal, as if, for the first time in her life, she needed something more than she had always had.
“Which way did Dad go, Billy?” she asked, “north or south?”
“North,” said Billy, “he rode th’ Cup Rim range today.”
When the meal, a trifle silent in deference to Tharon’s silence, was done, the men rose awkwardly. They stood a moment, looking about, undecided.
Conford picked them up with his eyes and nodded out. He felt that just maybe the girl 14 would rather be alone. But Tharon stopped the reluctant egress.
“Don’t go, boys,” she said, “come on in th’ room. There’s no moon tonight.” But she did not play on the melodeon. Instead she sat in the deep window that looked over the rolling uplands and was quiet, listening.
“Turn out th’ light, Bent,” she said, “somehow I feel like shadows tonight.”
So they sat about in the great room, black with the darkness of the soft spring night, and like the true worshippers they were, they did not speak. Only the red butts of their cigarettes glowed and faded, to glow again and again fade out. Tharon sat curled in the window, her graceful limbs drawn up to her chin, her eyes half closed, her keen ears open like a forest creature’s. She was listening for the marked rhythm of the great El Rey, the clap-clap, clap-clap of the king of Last’s Holding as he singlefooted down the hollow slopes of the lifting eastern range.
And as she waited she thought of many things. Odd little happenings of her childhood came back to her––the time she had caught her father killing the winter’s beef, had wept in hysterical pity and forbidden him to finish.
They had had no meat those long months following––and she had so tired of beans, that she 15 had never been able to eat them since. She smiled in the dusk as she recalled Jim Last’s life-long indulgence of her.
And the time she had wanted to make her own knee-short dresses as long as Anita’s, to sweep the floors, with fringe upon them and stripes of bright print.
She had worn them so––at twelve––until she found that they hindered the free use of her young limbs in mounting a horse, free-foot and bareback. Then, once again the memory of her father’s face when she questioned him concerning her mother.
“Boys,” she said suddenly, smiling to herself, “did you ever know a man like my dad?”
There was a movement among the lounging riders, a shifting of position, a striking of cigarette ash.
“No, sir,” said Billy promptly, “there hain’t another man’s good with a gun as him, not anywhere’s in Lost Valley. Not even Buck Courtrey himself. I’d back Jim Last against him, even, in fair-draw. Why?”
“Oh, nothin’,” said the girl, “only––listen––Glory!” she added slipping down from the window to stand quietly in the gloom, “that’s him now! I was wishin’ hard he’d come. 16 Say––listen–––Why,––there’s somethin’ gone wrong with El Rey’s feet! 1––2–––3, 4, 5, 6–––1––2––Boys––he’s breakin’! Th’ king ain’t singlefootin’ right, for th’ first time since Jim Last put a halter on him! Come––come quick!”
Ordinarily Tharon was a bit slow in her movements, as the very graceful often are. Now she was across the room to the western door before a man had moved. They joined her there and she stood at attention, one hand at her breast, the breath held still in her throat. The light, shining through from the eating room beyond, made a halo of her tawny hair. Silently the riders grouped about her and listened.
Sure enough. Down along the range that rang as some open stretches do, there came the clip-clap of a hurrying horse, only now the hoof beats were regular for a little space, to break, halt, start on, and again ring true in the beautiful syncopation of the born singlefooter. The king was coming home, but, alas! not as he had ever come before, in full flight, proud and powerful. He held his speed and sacrificed his certainty to the man who clung desperately to the saddle horn and swayed in wide arcs, so that he must shift continually to keep under him.
Into the dim glow of light at the open door came El Rey at last, great blue-silver stallion, his