And then, all suddenly, into her dreaming there came the sound of a horse's hoofs on the sounding-board without--slow hoofs, uncertain. For one swift second that sound, coming out of the dusk with its uncertainty, sent a chill of memory down her nerves. So had come El Rey that night in spring when he brought Jim Last home to die! She rose swiftly and silently and stepped to the western door. There, in the shadows and the softness of coming night, a horse loomed along the green stretch, came plodding up to stop and stand before her, a brown horse, with the stirrups of his saddle hung on the pommel, his rein tied short up--Captain, the good, common friend of Kenset--of the--foothills! Tharon felt the blood pour back upon her heart and stay there for an awful moment. She put up a hand and touched her throat, and to save her life she did not know why this sudden sickening fear should come upon her. She had seen men killed, had known tragedy and loss and heartache, but never before had she seen the crest of the distant Wall to dance upon the pale skyline so. Then she whirled into the house and her young voice pealed out a call--Billy, Conford, Bent--she drew them to her running through the deep house--to point to the silent messenger and question them with wide blue eyes where fear rose up like a living thing. Billy at her shoulder, looked not at Captain, but at her. A sigh lifted his breast, but he stifled it at birth and turned with the others back toward the corrals. Tharon, running toward the deep room where the Virgin stood in Her everlasting beauty, unfastened her soft white dress as she ran. Inside she flung herself on her knees before the Holy Mother and poured out a trembling prayer. "Not that! Oh, Mary, not that! Let it not be _that_!" she whispered thickly. Then she was up, into her riding clothes--was out where the boys were hurriedly saddling the Finger Marks. Presently she was on El Rey and shooting like a silver shaft in the summer dusk down along the green levels toward the east. They rode in silence, Conford, Bent, Jack, Curly, Billy and herself, and a thousand thoughts were boiling miserably in two hearts. El Rey, Golden, Redbuck, Drumfire, Westwind and Sweetheart, they went down along the sounding dark plain, a magnificent band. The whole earth seemed to resound to the thunder of their going, and for once in their lives her beauties could not run fast enough for the mistress of Last's. They went like the wind itself, and yet they were slow to Tharon.