The girl lay flat at its edge and with her face to the crystal surface, drank long and deeply. As she looked up with a smile, Billy Brent felt the heart in him contract with a sudden ache. Her fresh face, its cheeks whipped pink under their tan by the winds, its blue eyes sparkling, its wet red lips parted over the white teeth, hurt him with a downright pain. "Oh, Tharon," he said with an accent that was all-revealing, "Oh, Tharon, dear!" The girl scrambled to her feet and looked at him in surprise. "Billy," she said sharply, "what's th' matter with you? Are you sick?" "Yes," said the boy with conviction, "I am. Let's go home." "Sick, how?" she pressed, with the born tyranny of the loving woman, "have you got that pain in your stomach again?" Billy laughed in spite of himself, and the romantic ache was shattered. "For the love of Pete!" he complained, "don't you ever forget that? You know I've never et an ounce of Anita's puddin's since. No, I think," he finished judiciously as he mounted Golden, "that I've caught somethin', Tharon--caught somethin' from that feller of th' red-beet badge. Leastways I've felt it ever sence I left th' clearin'." And as they swung away from the spring toward the Holding, far ahead under its cottonwoods, he let out the young horse for another stretch. "Bet Golden can beat El Rey up home," he said over his shoulder. "Beat th' king?" cried Tharon aghast, "you're foolin', Billy, an' I don't want to run nohow. I've run enough this day." So the rider held up again and together they paced slowly up through the gathering twilight where long blue shadows were reaching out to touch them from the western Wall and the golden shafts were turning to crimson, were lifting as the sun sank, were travelling up and up along the eastern mountains toward the pale skies. Soon they rode in purple dusk while the whole upper world was bathed in crimson and lavender light and Lost Valley lay deep in the earth's heart, a sinister spot, secret and dark. "Sometimes, Billy," said Tharon softly, "I like to ride like this, in th' big shadows--an' then I like to have some one with me that I know, some one like you, some one who will understand when I don't talk, an' who is always there beside me. It's a wonderful feelin'--but somehow, it's soft, too--mebby too soft--like--like--like a woman who's just a woman." The boy swallowed once, miserably. "Always, Tharon," he said huskily, "always--when you want me--or need me--I'll be there, beside you. An' you don't need to even speak a word to me. I'm like th' dogs--there whether you call or not." "I know," said the girl, and reaching over she caught the rider's hand, brown beneath its vanity of studded leather cuff, and gave it a little tender pressure. Billy set his teeth to keep from crushing her fingers, and together they rode slowly up along the sounding slopes to the beautiful security and comfort of Last's Holding. CHAPTER VII THE SHOT IN THE CANONS