She was near now--she could see Courtrey's face, waxen white but fearless, his dark eyes turned back toward her in a sort of desperate admiration.... Courtrey loved strength and courage and all things wild and fierce. She could see Bolt's staring eyeballs, his open mouth, gasping and piteous. One more moment--another--yet one more--then she rose in her stirrups and fired straight at the broad bay temple, shining and black with sweat! The great gallant Ironwood went down in a huge arc--first his beautiful head, then the sinking arch of his neck, then the shoulders that had worked so wondrously. He rolled on his back like a hoop, his iron-shod hoofs spinning for one spectacular moment in the air. Then he lay at sudden ease, his still fluttering nose pointing directly back the way he had come. With the first catching stumble of the true forefeet, the man on his back had shot out of the saddle and far ahead. He landed twenty feet away and squarely on his head and shoulders. Like Bolt, Courtrey's body turned a complete somersault--and lay still, at sudden peace. Tharon Last and El Rey went on like an arrow--they could not stop. When at last she did draw the great king down she was far and away from the spot. She turned her head, panting and dizzy, and looked back.... She could see the prone red heap that was Bolt--a little way beyond that other, lesser, darker heap.... For a long time she sat on El Rey's heaving back and stared unseeingly at the green earth where the short grasses quivered in the little wind. There was a deathly white line about her lips, but her eyes blazed with the fire that had characterized them from birth, the flickering, unfathomable flame that came and went. Then, presently, new lines came in her young face, unstable lines that quivered and worked, and all the good green earth danced grotesquely before her vision, for a wall of tears shut out the world. ... She laid her head down on El Rey's cloudy mane--and wept. * * * * * It was early dawn at Last's Holding. The sun was not yet up behind the eastern ramparts. The cottonwoods whispered in the dawn-wind, the spring beneath the milk-house talked and murmured. Out in the big corrals the cattle were beginning to stir and bawl. In the kitchen old Anita and young Paula had breakfast waiting for the men. Deep in that dim south room where the pale Virgin kept watch and ward, Kenset of the foothills slept in healing peace. And at the step of the western door, Billy stood by Golden--Golden the beautiful, who ranked next to El Rey himself--and his face was lifted to Tharon who drooped against the lintel with her forehead on her arm. The boy held her hand clasped in both of his own, and there was a yearning tenderness in his soft voice when he spoke, a pride and joy ineffable that glowed above the pain that was never to leave him.