The next day the master of the Stronghold rode away on Bolt. As he left, Ellen, standing in the doorway like a pale ghost, lifted her tragic eyes to his face with the look of a faithful dog. "Where you goin', Buck?" she asked timidly. "Off," said the man shortly. "Ain't you goin'--goin' to kiss me?" He laughed cruelly. "Not after what I ben a-hearin', I ain't!" She sprang forward, catching at his knee. "What--what you ben a-hearin'? There ain't nothin' about me you could a-heard, Buck, dear! Nothin' in this world! I ben true to you as your shadow!" Every soul within hearing knew the words for the utter and absolute truth, yet Courtrey looked at Wylackie Bob, at Arizona, and laughed. "Like hell, you have!" he said, struck the Ironwood and was gone around the corner of the house with the sound of thunder. Ellen wet her lips and looked around like a wounded animal. Her brother Cleve, saddling up a little way apart, cast a long studying glance at Wylackie and Arizona. He jerked the cinch so savagely that the horse leaped and struck. For four days there was absolute dearth at the Stronghold. Courtrey did not return. Ellen timidly tried to find out from the _vaqueros_ where he had gone, but they evaded her. Then, on the morning of that day, Steptoe Service, grinning and important, came to the Stronghold and served on Ellen a summons in suit for divorce. She met him at the door and invited him in, timidly and shyly, but he stood on the stone and made known his business. At first she did not understand, was like a child told something too deep for its intellect to grasp, bewildered. Then, when Service made it brutally plain, she slipped down along the doorpost like a wilted lily and lay long and white on the sand-scrubbed floor. Her women, loving her desperately, gathered her up and shut the door in the sheriff's face. They sent for Cleve, and not even the presence of Black Bart in the near corral could keep the brother from running into the darkened room where Ellen lay, too stunned to rally. "Damn him!" he gritted, falling on his knees beside her, "this's what's come of it! I ben lookin' for something of its like. Let him go. We'll leave Lost Valley, Ellen. We'll go out an' start another life, begin all over again. We're both too young to be floored by a man like Courtrey. Let him go." But the woman turned her waxen face to the wall and shook her head. "There ain't no life in this world for me without Buck," she whispered. "If he don't want me, I don't want myself." "You dont' want to hang to him, do you, Sis?" begged the man, "don't want to stay at th' Stronghold after this?" "Rather stay here under Buck's feet like th' poorest of his dogs than be well-off somewheres where I couldn't never see him again, never look in his face." "God!" groaned Cleve, "you love him like that!" "Yes," said Ellen, wearily, "like that."