Spread out on the velvet slopes below lay the herds that belonged to it, sleek fat cattle, guarded carelessly by a few lazy and desultory riders. Courtrey was too secure in his insolent might to take those rigid and untiring precautions which were the only price of safety to the lesser men of the community. Toward the south where the Valley narrowed to the Bottle Neck and the Broken Bend went out, there shimmered and shone like a silver ribbon hung down the cliff the thin, long shower of Vestal's Veil fall. The roar of it could be heard for miles like the constant and incessant wail of winds in time-worn canyons. Along the floor of the Cup Rim range, sunken and hidden from the upper levels, there rode a compact group of horsemen. They went abreast, in column of fours, and they were armed to the teeth, a bristling presentation. All in all there were forty-two of them and at their head rode Tharon on El Rey, a slim and gallant young figure. Her bright hair, tied with a scarlet ribbon, shone under her wide hat like an aureole. She talked with Conford who rode beside her, and now and then she smiled, for all the world as if she went to some young folks' gathering, instead of to the first uncertain issue of blind mob law against outlaws. But if she felt a lightness of excitement in her heart it was more than actuated by the grim and quiet band that followed. They knew--and she knew, also--that what they did this day, in the open sunlight, meant savage strife and bloodshed for some as sure as death. For two hours they rode across the sunken range where the cottonwoods and aspens made a lovely and mottled shade, to reach at last the sharp ascent to the uplands above. When they topped the rim and started forward, the huge herds of Courtrey lay spread before them, bright as paint on the living green. Two thousand cattle grazed there in peace and plenty. Here and there a rider sat his horse in idleness. At the first sight of the solidly formed mass coming out of the Cup Rim on to the levels, these riders straightened in their saddles and rode in closer to their charges. The eyes of the newcomers went over the bright pattern of the grazing cattle. A motley bunch they were, red, black and white, with here and there descendants of the yellows which none but John Dement had ever owned in Lost Valley. Dement, riding near the head of the line saw this and muttered in his beard. "Thar's some o' mine," he said pointing, "th' very ones that was stampeded. I'd know 'em in hell." [Illustration: SHE TALKED WITH CONFORD WHO RODE BESIDE HER AND NOW AND THEN SHE SMILED] With the nearing of the line of horsemen a rider detached himself from the right of the herd and went sailing away across the levels toward the distant Stronghold. Quick as a flash Tharon Last lifted the rifle that lay ready on her pommel and sent a shot whining toward him. "Just to show we mean business," she muttered to herself.