The tree-toads were singing off by the springhouse and the cattle in the big corrals made the low, ceaseless night-sounds common to a herd. The riders were gone, the _vaqueros_ were at their posts around the resting stock, the low adobe house was settling into the quiet of the night. Miserably Kenset looked at this slip of a girl. She was strange to him, unfathomable. There were depths beneath the changing blue eyes which appalled him. How would he feel toward her when the thing was done--when she had killed Courtrey? But she must not be allowed to do it. Not though it took his life. If she was pledged to this thing, he was no less pledged to its prevention. He felt a sadness within him as he saw the soft curve of her cheek, the outline of her tawny head. With an impulse which he could not govern he reached out suddenly and took her hands in his and pressed them against his heart. The pounding of that heart was noticeable through her hands into his. But he did not speak--he could not. But he had no need. He could have said nothing that would have cleared the situation, would have told himself or her what was in that pounding heart of his--for to save his life he did not know. And Tharon frowned in the darkness and drew her hands from under those pressing ones. "Mr. Kenset," she said steadily, "you're always tryin' to make me weak, to break me down with words an' looks an' touches. These hands o' yours,--_damn 'em_, they _do_ make me weak! Don't put 'em on me again!" And with a sudden, sharp savagery she struck his hands off his breast, whirled away in the darkness and was gone. CHAPTER IX SIGNAL FIRES IN THE VALLEY Kenset, two days later, gave Sam Drake a check for five hundred dollars and a letter, unpostmarked but sealed with tape and wax. Drake, who owned some half-breed Ironwoods, rode the best one down the Wall. Kenset had cautioned him not to talk before he left--he feared Drake's propensity for speech. But he was the only man in Lost Valley whom he felt he could approach. With the courier's departure he rode back to the Holding and told Tharon and Conford what he had done. "These men are the best to be had," he said, "and they will go anywhere on earth for money." But Tharon frowned and struck a fist into a soft palm. "What you mean?" she cried, "by takin' my work out of my hands like this? I won't have it! I won't wait!" "What I meant when I caught your bridle that day in the glade," answered the man, "to stop you from bloodshed." Then he went back to his cabin and his interrupted work and set himself to wait in patience for the return of Drake. * * * * *