* * * * * "Tharon," said Billy Brent this day, clanking around the corner of the adobe house, his leather chaps flapping with every step, his yellow hair curling boyishly under his hat-brim. "Tharon, I got bad news for you." There was genuine distress in his grey eyes. "Yes?" asked the mistress of Last's, straightening up. "Yes, sir, an' I hate like hell t' tell it." "Out with it, Billy. What's wrong?" "Somebody's dynamited th' Crystal Spring in th' Cup Rim." "_What?_" The word was in italics. Its one syllable told all one might care to know of the importance of Billy's news. "Yes. Opened her up fer two square yards. Spread th' lovely old Crystal all over th' range. An' she's gone, as sure's shootin'. Nothin' but a lot o' wet an' dryin' mud to show for her." Tharon drew a long breath. "Courtrey's beginnin'," she said. "He's heard th' word I sent th' settlers. He's goin' t' use th' tactics now with Last's that he's used with every poor devil he wanted to run out of th' Valley, th' tactics he darsent use while Jim Last lived. Well--go send Conford to me, Billy." The girl sat down in the doorway and gazed sombrely out over the summer land. When her foreman came and stood before her, a slim, efficient figure, dark-faced and quiet, she had already made up her mind. "Burt," she said swiftly, "drive th' cattle down from th' Cup Rim right away. We'll run those two bunches under Blue Pine an' Nick Bob out toward th' Black Coulee. Tell 'em t' keep close t' th' others. I trust th' Indians, but there ain't no Indian livin' can meet Courtrey's white renegades in courage an' wits. Then we'll start right in an' dig a well th' first well ever dug on th' open range in this man's land." "Good Lord, Tharon!" said Conford, "A well!" "Yes. Th' livin' water holes have been th' pride of th' Valley, I know, but we'll fix this well of ours so's even Courtrey will respect it." There was a grim note in the golden voice. "How?" asked Conford uneasily. "Dig it first," said Tharon, "then I'll tell you." What the mistress said, went. Therefore, the next morning saw a disgusted bunch of cowboys and Indian _vaqueros_ setting to with a will at a spot much nearer the Holding than the Crystal had been, and it took a much shorter time to reach water in a good gravel bed than any one had dreamed. In three days the thing was done and Conford presented himself, smiling. "Now, Miss Secrecy," he said, "come on with th' mystery." Tharon went in to the big desk which Jim Last had used and which was now her own, and returned with a square white slab of pine, elaborately smoothed and finished by Jose. "Read that," she said, and held it up, face out. Printed neatly upon its shining surface, in the jet-black ink that old Anita made from the berries of a certain bush which grew at the foot of the cliffs across the Valley, were these words: