This was new work for Kenset, strange work, this waiting for men who called themselves the Vigilantes--for a slim golden girl who rode and swore and pledged herself to blood!
More than once in the quiet night that followed, Kenset wiped a hand across his brow and found it moist with sweat.
What did he mean? Again and again he asked himself that question.
What did he mean by Tharon Last? What was this cold fire that burned him when he thought of her pulling those sinister blue guns on Courtrey? Did he fear to see her kill Courtrey--to see that shadowy stain on her hands--or did he fear something worse, infinitely worse--to see Courtrey, famous gun man, beat her to it!
He shuddered and sweat in the clear cold of the starlit night and searched his bewildered heart. He could find no answer save and except the weary one that Tharon Last must be holden from her sworn course.
Tharon Last who looked at him with those deep blue eyes and spoke so coolly of this promised killing! He recalled the earnest frown between her brows, the simple directness of her duty as she saw it and told it to him.
Either way--either way--she was lost to him forever--There he caught himself and started all over again.
What could she ever be? She with her strange soul, _her lack of soul_!
What did he want her to be? One moment he ached with her loveliness--the next he shuddered at her savagery.
He did not want her to be anything! Why not go out to the dim and half-remembered world that he had left, the world of lights, padded floors and marble steps, leave this impossible land with its blood and wrongs? Nay, he could not leave Lost Valley. He was as much a part of it as the grim Rockface itself, the Vestal's Veil eternally shimmering in its thousand feet of beauty. Life or death, for Kenset, it must be here.
So he waited and listened and watched the stars wheeling in everlasting majesty, and he found his hands falling now and again upon the gun-butts at his sides!
Near dawn Banner awoke, refreshed and stronger, and made him lie down for a few hours' sleep.
When he awoke the sun was well up along the heavens and Banner was offering him a piece of dry bread and some jerky, spiced and smoked and as dry and sweet as anything he had ever eaten in all his life.