"What have you heard?" she wanted to know.
"Look here, young woman,"--he raised his voice suddenly and on the instant there was a sound of boots on the store floor and the settlers, the two men in the corner, Baston and two clerks came crowding out to hear, "you look a-here--don't you know it's a-gin th' law for any one t' make a threat like you done, open an' above board, in th' Golden Cloud th' other night?"
Tharon shifted the meal-sack higher on her left arm. Courtrey's eyes went down to her right hand and stayed there.
The girl's upper lip lifted from her teeth in a sneer that was the acme of insult. The fire was beginning to play in her blue eyes.
"Yes, _law_! you young hussy, an' don't you fergit that I represent it."
The girl threw down the sack and flashed both hands on the gun-butts. Courtrey, watching, was half-a-second behind her and stopped with his hands hovering.
"Not much, Courtrey," she said, "you fast gun man! You're too slow. An' this ain't your game, anyway, not face t' face. You're all right on a dark night--_an' from behind_. Fine! But you're a coward. You're what I called you before--an assassin."
She was pale as ashes, her eyes narrowed to blazing slits. Jim Last, gun man, was in her like those composite pictures which show the shadow in the substance. There was a gasp from the store porch where Thomas stood with a shaking hand covering his lips. Baston was stuck against his wall like a leech, rigid. These men knew that she tempted death.
Not a man in Lost Valley could have done it and gotten away with it.
Tharon knew it, too, but she did not care.
"An' now you know what you are, Courtrey. I'll tell th' same to you, Step Service. Law! In Lost Valley? Yes, Courtrey's law! Th' law of th' gun alone--th' law of thieves--th' law of murderers. An' you stand for that, you bet! What were you before you took th' oath of office? Tell me that! Th' man who killed old Mike McCrea an' took his cattle down th' Wall! Th' whole Valley knows it--but we've never dared to say it before!"
The porch was lined with people now. Soft-footed Indians and Mexican _vaqueros_, sprung from nowhere, cowboys, ranchers, women, they came silently up and listened.
The sheriff's red face was the colour of liver, purple and mottled with bursting rage. His fingers worked at his sides. He set his lips, and his small eyes never left the girl's face.