The next moment she had whirled out from the flickering shade of the willows and was gone around toward the north--there was only the sound of hoofs ringing on the earth. Kenset, left alone where the Silver Hollow bubbled softly above its snowy sands, passed a trembling hand across his eyes and stood as in a trance.
What did it mean? What had he promised? What vital emotion had gripped him that his usually quiet tongue had rushed into that torrential speech that dealt with life and death? What was Tharon Last to him?
A figure of the old West! A romantic gun woman with her weapons on her hips! A rider of wild horses!
Slowly, as if he had gained an added weight of years, he reined Captain and swung himself up. He rode east from the spring toward the lacy and far-reaching skirts of the forest, and for the first time he saw the rolling country with tragic eyes.
It held deep issues--life and death and the passing or continuing of régimes and and dynasties--but it was a wondrous country, and, come good or bad, it had become his own. He swung around in his saddle and looked far back across the Valley. He saw the golden light on its uncounted acres, the shadow falling at the foot of the great Rockface, the mighty Wall itself with the silver ribbon of the Vestal's Veil falling straight down from the upper rim, the distant town, looking always like a dull gem in a dark setting, and a thrill shot to his heart.
Yes, if he lived to do his work in the hidden Valley--if he was shot this night on his own doorstep, it was his country.
He who was alien in every way, was yet native.
Something in the depths of him came down as from far distant racial haunts and was at home.
So he rode slowly up among the scattered oaks with his hands folded on the mutilated pommel, and he knew that his lines were definitely cast.
Tharon Last rode into the Holding and dismounted in unwonted silence.
There was a frown between her brows, an unusual thing. She turned the stallion into his corral, dragged off the big saddle to hang it on its peg, flung the studded bridle on a post.
The men were not in yet. Far toward the north beyond the big corrals she could see the cattle grazing toward home. A surge of savage joy in her possessions flooded over her. These things were her own. They were what Jim Last had worked for all his life.