For once in his life Courtrey, the bully, felt a premonitory chill down his spine--because for the first time that promising glance of his failed of its effect! Only here and there along the rows of faces did one cower. There were faces, many faces, that looked back at him with steady eyes and tight lips.... Verily it was time he conquered the riding, shooting, beautiful she-devil who had made this thing possible! The sooner he got Tharon Last away from this bunch of spawn the better. Then he would sweep in with all his old swift methods, only sharper ones this time, and "clean" them all. When he got through it would be a different man's Valley, make no mistake about that! Here Ellen looked straight into his eyes and both were conscious of the shock. Ellen wilted and Courtrey frowned and struck a fist against the railing near him.... He looked up and met the hesitating eyes of Ben Garland on the bench and his own hardened down to pin points. The farce was finished save for the Judge's decision--Dick Burtree was slumped in his chair, dead drunk and asleep. Wylackie Bob was lighting a cigarette in his brown fingers, a smile on his evil mouth, his slow, black eyes covering the slim white form of Ellen in a speculative way, as if he dreamed of making true his blasphemous lies. Ellen was sweet as a flower in her open-lipped beauty, her panting despair. Wylackie did not notice the slim man beside her whose lips were so tight that they were a mere line across his face. No one at the Stronghold noticed Cleve much. Then Ben Garland was speaking, and Ellen gathered her dim wits enough to make out that he was saying strange things--awful things--that had to do with Courtrey's freedom. Then she knew--swaying and groping with her blue-veined hands--that the thing was done--that she was no longer a wife. That she would never again sleep in the bend of Courtrey's arm as she had slept in those golden days of long ago--that she was an outcast, blackened beyond all hope by the damning and unchoice words of Wylackie Bob.... Then the world faded out for Ellen in merciful blackness. The petty officials rose with laughter and clanking of boots on the board floors--the crowd filed out in a striking silence. Never before had a crowd in Lost Valley gone out from a courtroom in that strange and bodeful silence. The sight of Ellen lying white and limp across Cleve Whitmore's shoulder like a sack of grain, as he passed out with the moving mass, had an odd effect. It was partly the white dress that did it--and the time was ripe. Courtrey and his gang were toward the fore--first out. They spread off to one side with jest and quip, with flash of bottle and slap on shoulder. The populace thinned a bit from the steps.... And then suddenly as a pistol shot Cleve Whitmore's voice rang out like a clarion. "Wylackie!" it pealed across the subdued noises, "You ---- ---- ---- hell hound. _Turn round!_" There was death in it.