'Drag' Harlan

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“DRAG” HARLAN

She laid her head on his shoulder, sobbing, and talking incoherently. Page 65

“DRAG” HARLAN

BY

CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER

AUTHOR OF

THE BOSS OF THE LAZY Y,

“FIREBRAND” TREVISON,

THE TRAIL HORDE,

THE RANCHMAN, Etc.

FRONTISPIECE BY

P. V. E. IVORY

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

Copyright

A. C. McClurg & Co.

1921

Published May, 1921

Copyrighted in Great Britain

CONTENTS

“DRAG” HARLAN

CHAPTER I

A DESERT RIDER

From out of the shimmering haze that veiled the mystic eastern space came a big black horse bearing a rider. Swinging wide, to avoid the feathery dust that lay at the base of a huge sand dune, the black horse loped, making no sound, and seeming to glide forward without effort. Like a somber, gigantic ghost the animal moved, heroic of mold, embodying the spirit of the country, seeming to bear the sinister message of the desert, the whispered promise of death, the lingering threat, the grim mockery of life, and the conviction of futility.

The black horse had come far. The glossy coat of him was thickly sprinkled with alkali dust, sifted upon him by the wind of his passage through the desert; his black muzzle was gray with it; ropes of it matted his mane, his forelock had become a gray-tinged wisp which he fretfully tossed; the dust had rimmed his eyes, causing them to loom large and wild; and as his rider pulled him to a halt on the western side of the sand dune—where both horse and rider would not be visible on the sky line—he drew a deep breath, shook his head vigorously, and blew a thin stream of dust from his nostrils.

With head and ears erect, his eyes flaming his undying courage and his contempt for distance and the burning heat that the midday sun poured upon him, he gazed westward, snorting long breaths into his eager lungs.

The rider sat motionless upon him—rigid and alert. His gaze also went into the west; and he blinked against the white glare of sun and distance, squinting his eyes and scanning the featureless waste with appraising glances.

In the breathless, dead calm of the desert there was no sound or movement. On all sides the vast gray waste stretched, a yawning inferno of dead, dry sand overhung with a brassy, cloudless sky in which swam the huge ball of molten silver that for ages had ruled that baked and shriveled land.

A score of miles westward—twoscore, perhaps—the shadowy peaks of some mountains loomed upward into the mystic haze, with purple bases melting into the horizon; southward were other mountains, equally distant and mysterious; northward—so far away that they blurred in the vision—were still other mountains. Intervening on all sides was the stretching, soundless, aching void of desolation, carrying to the rider its lurking threat of death, the promise of evil to come.

The man, however, seemed unperturbed. In his narrowed, squinting eyes as he watched the desert was a gleam of comprehension, of knowledge intimate and sympathetic. They glowed with the serene calm of confidence; and far back in them lurked a glint of grim mockery. It was as though they visualized the threatened dangers upon which they looked, answering the threat with contempt.

The man was tall. His slim waist was girded by a cartridge belt which was studded with leaden missiles for the rifle that reposed in the saddle holster, and for the two heavy pistols that sagged at his hips. A gray woolen shirt adorned his broad shoulders; a scarlet neckerchief at his throat which had covered his mouth as he rode was now drooping on his chest; and the big, wide-brimmed felt hat he wore was jammed far down over his forehead. The well-worn leather chaps that covered his legs could not conceal their sinewy strength, nor could the gauntleted leather gloves on his hands hide the capable size of them.

He was a fixture of this great waste of world in whose center he sat. He belonged to the country; he was as much a part of it as the somber mountains, the sun-baked sand, the dead lava, and the hardy, evil-looking cacti growth that raised its spined and mocking green above the arid stretch. He symbolized the spirit of the country—from the slicker that bulged at the cantle of the saddle behind him, to the capable gloved hands that were now resting on the pommel of the saddle—he represented the force which was destined to conquer the waste places.

For two days he had been fighting the desert; and in the serene calm of his eyes was the identical indomitability that had been in them when he had set forth. As he peered westward the strong lines around his mouth relaxed, his lips opened a trifle, and a mirthless smile wreathed them. He patted the shoulder of the black horse, and the dead dust ballooned from the animal’s coat and floated heavily downward.

“We’re about halfway, Purgatory,” he said aloud, his voice coming flat and expressionless in the dead, vacuum-like silence. He did not cease to peer westward nor to throw sharp glances north and south. He drew off a glove and pushed his hat back, using a pocket handkerchief to brush the dust from his face and running the fingers of the hand through his hair—thereby producing another ballooning dust cloud which splayed heavily downward.

“What’s botherin’ me is that shootin’,” he went on, still speaking to the black horse. “We sure enough heard it—didn’t we?” He laughed, again patting the black’s shoulder. “An’ you heard it first—as usual—with me trailin’ along about half a second behind. But we sure heard ’em, eh?”

The black horse whinnied lowly, whereupon the rider dismounted, and stretched himself.

From a water-bag at the cantle of the saddle he poured water into his big hat, watching sympathetically while the big horse drank. Some few drops that still remained in the hat after the horse had finished he playfully shook on the animal’s head, smiling widely at the whinny of delight that greeted the action. He merely wet his own lips from the water-bag. Then for an instant, after replacing the bag, he stood at the black’s shoulder, his face serious.

“We’ll hit the Kelso water-hole about sundown, I reckon, Purgatory,” he said. “That’s certain. There’s only one thing can stop us—that shootin’. If it’s Apaches, why, I reckon there’s a long dry spell ahead of us; but if it’s only Greasers——”

He grinned with grim eloquence, patted the black again, and climbed into the saddle. Again, as before, he sat silent upon his mount, scanning the sun-scorched waste; and then he rode forward.

An hour later, during which he loped the black horse slowly, he again drew the animal to a halt and gazed around him, frowning, his eyes gleaming with a savage intolerance.

The shooting he had heard some time previous to his appearance at the base of the big sand dune had not been done by Indians. He was almost convinced of that now. Or, if Indians had done the shooting, they had not yet observed him. The fact that he had seen no smoke signals proved that.

Still, there was the deep silence on every hand to bring doubt into his mind; and he knew that Indians—especially Apaches—were tricky, sometimes foregoing the smoke signals to lie in ambush. And very likely—if they had seen him coming—they were doing that very thing: waiting for him to ride into the trap they had prepared. He had not been able to locate the point from which the reports had come. It had seemed to him that they had come from a point directly westward; but he could not be sure, for he had seen no smoke.

He talked no more to the horse, sitting rigidly in the saddle, erect, his head bent a little forward, his chin thrusting, his lips curving with a bitterly savage snarl. He felt the presence of living things with him in the desert; a presentiment had gripped him—a conviction that living men were close and hostile.

Reaching downward, he drew the rifle from the saddle holster and examined its mechanism. Placing it across his knee, he drew out his heavy pistols, one after another, slowly twirling the cylinders. He replaced the pistols, making sure that the holster flaps were out of the way so that they would not catch or drag at the weapons when he wanted to use them—and with the rifle resting across his legs near the saddle horn, he rode slowly forward.

He swung wide of even the small sand dunes as he passed them, and he kept a vigilant eye upon the dead rocks that dotted the level at infrequent intervals. Even the cactus clumps received flattering attention; and the little stretches of greasewood that came within range of his vision were examined closely.

At the end of half an hour he had seen nothing unusual. Here and there he had noticed a rattler lurking in the shade of a rock or partly concealed under the thorny blade of a sprawling cactus; and he had seen a sage hen nestling in the hot sand. But these were fixtures—as was also the Mexican eagle that winged its slow way in mile-wide circles in the glaring, heat-pulsing sky.

The rider again halted the black horse. The presentiment of evil had grown upon him, and he twisted around in the saddle, sweeping the desolate vast level with cold, alert, puzzled eyes.

There was no object near him behind which an enemy might lie concealed; the gray floor of the desert within many hundred miles of him was smooth and flat and obstructionless. Far away, half a mile, perhaps, he saw a thrusting knob of rock, with some cactus fringing it. From where he sat in the saddle it seemed that the rock might be the peak of a mountain reaching upward out of the sea of sand and desert waste—but it was barren on sides and top, and would afford no concealment for an enemy, except at its base. And even the base was not large enough to conceal more than a few men.

The rider gazed long at the rock, but could detect no sign of movement near it. He had turned from it, to look again into the western distance, when Purgatory whinnied lowly.

Flashing around in the saddle, the rider again faced the rock. And he saw movement there now. The distance was great, but the clarity of the atmosphere brought a moving object distinctly into his vision. The object was a man, and, like a huge fly, he was crawling rapidly up the sloping side of the rock, toward its peak, which flattened abruptly at the summit.

The man bore a rifle. The rider could see it dragging from the man’s hand; and in a flash the rider was out of the saddle, throwing himself flat behind a low ridge of sand, his own rifle coming to a rest on a small boulder as he trained its muzzle upon the man, who by this time had reached the summit of the rocks in the distance. The rider waited, nursing the stock of the rifle, his eyes blazing, while Purgatory, seemingly aware of an impending tragedy, moved slowly away as though understanding that he must not expose himself.

The rider waited, anticipating the bullet that would presently whine toward him. And then he heard the report of the man’s rifle, saw that the smoke streak had been directed downward, as though the man on the summit of the rock were shooting at something below him.

The rider had been pressing the trigger of his own weapon when he saw the smoke streak. He withheld his fire when he divined that the man was not shooting at him; and when he saw the man on the rock shoot again—downward once more—the rider frowned with embarrassment.

“Don’t even know I’m here!” he mused. “An’ me gettin’ ready to salivate him!”

He got to his knees and watched, curiosity gleaming in his eyes. He saw the man on the rock fire again—downward—and he noted a smoke spurt answer the shot, coming upward from the base of the rock. The rider got to his feet and peered intently at the rock. And now he saw another man crouching near its base. This man, however, was not the one the man on the summit of the rock was shooting at, for smoke streaks were issuing from a weapon in that man’s hand also, but they were horizontal streaks.

Therefore the rider divined that the two men must be shooting at another who was on the far side of the rock; and he ran to Purgatory, speaking no word until he had vaulted into the saddle. Then he spoke shortly.

“They’re white men, Purgatory, an’ they’re havin’ a private rukus, looks like. But we’re doin’ some investigatin’ just to see if the game’s on the level.”

CHAPTER II

A MAN’S REPUTATION

Purgatory moved fast, but warily. The black horse seemed to have caught something of his rider’s caution. For part of the distance toward the rock the animal traveled straight, loping rapidly, but as he neared the little stretch of broken country that surrounded the rock he began to sheer off, advancing with mincing steps, his ears erect, his eyes wide and alert, snorting suspiciously.

Knowing his horse, the rider made no attempt to guide him; he knew Purgatory was alert to any hostile movement on the part of the men who were shooting, and that at the first sign of danger to himself or to his rider he would do what was required of him.

The man on the summit of the rock was still shooting, though intermittently. It seemed to the rider that the man’s target must be elusive or concealed, for the shooter’s actions showed that he was irritated. The other man, too, was still shooting. The rider noted that he, too, seemed to be meeting with failure, for as the rider drew nearer he heard the man curse.

Neither of the two men who were visible to the rider had seen him—neither of them had heard the big black horse gliding over the deep sand of the desert. The rider grinned with grim mirthlessness, edging Purgatory around so that the two men, their backs toward him, were not more than twenty or thirty feet away and entirely exposed to his view.

So intent were they upon their work that they did not even hear the rider’s low laugh as he brought the big black horse to a halt and sat quietly in the saddle, a heavy pistol in each hand, watching them.

The rock, the rider noted, was a huge granite block, rotted from long exposure to the elements, seamed and scarred and cracked. The action of the eternally moving sand had worn an irregular-shaped concave into its southern wall, so that the summit overhung the side. The man on the summit was lying flat on his stomach, leaning far over, still shooting downward. The other man, who was standing at the base, was flattened against it, facing the concave side, shooting occasionally, and cursing volubly.

The rider was curious. Glancing sidelong, southward, he saw two horses not more than a hundred yards away. They were in a depression, behind a sand ridge, which accounted for the fact that the rider had not seen them before.

Sight of the horses brought a widening grin to the rider’s face. He had thought, at first, that the two men were shooting at another man, concealed behind the rock; but the fact that there were only two horses indicated that he had been in error. No man would be foolhardy enough to attempt to cross the desert on foot, and unless a man were a friend he would not be carried upon another man’s horse. Therefore, it seemed to be evident that the target at which the men were shooting was not another man.

And now, convinced that the men had cornered an animal of some kind, and that they feared it too greatly to face it openly, the rider laughed loudly and called to the men, his voice freighted with sarcasm.

“Scared?” he said. “Oh, don’t be. If you’ll back off a little an’ give him room, he’ll just naturally slope, an’ give you a chance to get to your cayuses.”

Both men wheeled almost at the same instant. The man at the base of the rock snarled—after the first gasp of astonishment, baring his teeth in hideous mirth and embarrassment; the other man, startled and caught off balance at the sound of the rider’s voice, slipped, tried to catch himself, failed, and tumbled awkwardly down, scrambling and cursing, to the sand within a few feet of the rider.

Sitting in the sand at the base of the rock, the man who had fallen also snarled as he sat, looking at the rider.

Neither of the two men moved after the involuntary muscular action that had resulted from their astonishment. The man at the base of the rock stood in the position in which he had found himself when he had wheeled.

The pistol in his right hand was held close to his side, the muzzle directed at the rider.

But a change was coming over the man’s face. The color was slowly going out of it, the lips were loosening as his jaws dropped, his body began to sag, and his eyes began to widen with fear, stark and naked. At length, the rider now watching him with a gaze in which there began to glow recognition and contempt, the man dropped his hands to his sides and leaned against the rock.

“‘Drag’ Harlan!” he muttered hoarsely.

The rider watched, his eyes glittering coldly, his lips twisting in a crooked sneer. Amusement was his dominating emotion, but there was hate in his gaze, mingling with a malignant joy and triumph. The pistols in his hands became steady as his wrist muscles stiffened; and he watched the two men warily, apparently looking straight at the standing man, but seeing the sitting man also.

And now a silence fell—a strained, premonitory silence that had in it a hint of imminent tragedy. The sitting man stiffened, divining the promise of violence; the standing man shrank back a little and looked downward at the pistol in his right hand.

The rider saw the glance and laughed lowly.

“Keep her right where she is, Dolver,” he warned. “You lift her one little wee lift, an’ I bore you plumb in the brain-box. Sort of flabbergasted, eh? Didn’t expect to run into me again so soon?”

He laughed as the other cringed, his face dead white, his eyes fixed on the rider with a sort of dread fascination.

“Dolver, didn’t you know when you got my little partner, Davey Langan, that I’d be comin’ for you?” said the rider in a slow, drawling whisper. “In the back you got him, not givin’ him a chance. You’re gettin’ yours now. I’m givin’ you a chance to take it like a man—standin’, with your face to me. Lift her now—damn you!”

There was no change in his expression as he watched the man he had called Dolver. There came no change in the cold, steady gleam of his eyes as he saw the man stiffen and swing the muzzle of his pistol upward with a quick, jerky motion. But he sneered as with the movement he sent a bullet into the man’s chest; his lips curving with slight irony when Dolver’s gun went off, the bullet throwing up sand at Purgatory’s forehoofs.

His eyes grew hard as he saw Dolver stagger, drop his pistol, and clutch at his chest; and he watched with seeming indifference as the man slowly sank to his knees and stretched out, face down, in the dust at the base of the rock.

His lips were stiff with bitter rage, however, as he faced the other man, who had not moved.

“Get up on your hind legs, you yellow coyote!” he commanded.

For an instant it seemed that the other man was to share the fate of the first. The man seemed to think so, too, for he got up trembling, his hands outstretched along the rock, the fingers outspread and twitching from the paralysis of fear that had seized him.

“Shoot your gab off quick!” commanded the rider. “Who are you?”

“I’m Laskar,” the man muttered.

“Where you from?”

“Lamo.”

The rider’s eyes quickened. “Where did you meet up with that scum?” He indicated Dolver.

“In town.”

“Lamo?”

The man nodded.

“How long ago?” asked the rider.

“’Bout a week.”

The man’s voice was hoarse; he seemed reluctant to talk more, and he cast furtive, dreading glances toward the base of the rock where Dolver had stood before the rider had surprised the men.

Watching the man narrowly, the rider noted his nervous glance, and his shrinking, dreading manner. Harlan’s eyes gleamed with suspicion, and in a flash he was off the black and standing before Laskar, forbidding and menacing.

“Take off your gun-belt an’ chuck it under my horse!” he directed sharply. “There’s somethin’ goin’ on here that ain’t been mentioned. I’m findin’ out what it is.”

He watched while the man unbuckled his cartridge belt and threw it—the pistol still in the holster—into the sand at Purgatory’s hoofs. Then he stepped to the man, sheathed one of his pistols, and ran the free hand over the other’s clothing in search of other weapons. Finding none, he stooped and took up Dolver’s pistol and rifle that had fallen from the man’s hands when he had tumbled off the rock, throwing them near where the cartridge belt had fallen.

“You freeze there while I take a look around this rock!” he commanded, with a cold look at the man.

Half a dozen steps took him around the base of the rock. He went boldly, though his muscles were tensed and his eyes alert for surprises. But he had not taken a dozen steps in all when he halted and stiffened, his lips setting into straight, hard lines.

For, stretched out on his left side in the sand close to the base of the rock—under the flattened summit which had afforded him protection from the bullets the man with the rifle had been sending at him—was a man.

The man was apparently about fifty, with a seamed, pain-lined face. His beard was stained with dust, his hair was gray with it; his clothing looked as though he had been dragged through it. He was hatless, and one of his boots was off. The foot had been bandaged with a handkerchief, and through the handkerchief the dark stains of a wound appeared.

The man’s shirt was open in front; and the rider saw that another wound gaped in his chest, near the heart. The man had evidently made some attempt to care for that wound, too, for a piece of cloth from his shirt had been cut away, to permit him to get at the wound easily.

The man’s left side seemed to be helpless, for the arm was twisted queerly, the palm of the hand turned limply upward; but when the rider came upon him the man was trying to tuck a folded paper into one of the cylinders of a pistol.

He had laid the weapon in the sand, and with his right hand was working with the cylinder and the paper. When he saw the rider he sneered and ceased working with the pistol, looking up into the rider’s face, his eyes glowing with defiance.

“No chance for that even, eh?” he said, glancing at the paper and the pistol. “Things is goin’ plumb wrong!”

He sagged back, resting his weight on the right elbow, and looked steadily at the rider—the look of a wounded animal defying his pursuers.

“Get goin’!” he jeered. “Do your damnedest! I heard that sneak, Dolver, yappin’ to you. You’re ‘Drag’ Harlan—gun-fighter, outlaw, killer! I’ve heard of you,” he went on as he saw Harlan scowl and stiffen. “Your reputation has got all over. I reckon you’re in the game to salivate me.”

Harlan sheathed his gun.

“You’re talkin’ extravagant, mister man.” And now he permitted a cold smile to wreathe his lips. “If it’ll do you any good to know,” he added, “I’ve just put Dolver out of business.”

“I heard that, too,” declared the man, laughing bitterly. “I heard you tellin’ Dolver. He killed your partner—or somethin’. That’s personal, an’ I ain’t interested. Get goin’—the sooner the better. If you’d hand it to me right now, I’d be much obliged to you; for I’m goin’ fast. This hole in my chest—which I got last night while I was sleepin’—will do the business without any help from you.”

After a pause for breath, the man began to speak again, railing at his would-be murderers. He was talking ramblingly when there came a sound from the opposite side of the rock—a grunt, a curse, and, almost instantly, a shriek.

The wounded man raised himself and threw a glance of startled inquiry at Harlan: “What’s that?”

Harlan watched the man steadily.

“I reckon that’ll be that man Laskar,” he said slowly. “I lifted his gun an’ his rifle, an’ Dolver’s gun, an’ throwed them under Purgatory—my horse. Laskar has tried to get them, an’ Purgatory’s raised some objection.”

He stepped back and peered around the rock. Laskar was lying in the sand near the base of the rock, doubled up and groaning loudly, while Purgatory, his nostrils distended, his eyes ablaze, was standing over the weapons that lay in the sand, watching the groaning man malignantly.

Harlan returned to the wounded man, to find that he had collapsed and was breathing heavily.

For some minutes Harlan stood, looking down at him; then he knelt in the sand beside him and lifted his head. The man’s eyes were closed, and Harlan laid his head down again and examined the wound in his chest.

He shook his head as he got up, went to Purgatory, and got some water, which he used to wipe away the dust and blood which had become matted over the wound. He shook his head again after bathing the wound. The wound meant death for the man within a short time. Yet Harlan forced some water into the half-open mouth and bathed the man’s face with it.

For a long time after Harlan ceased to work with him the man lay in a stupor-like silence, limp and motionless, though his eyes opened occasionally, and by the light in them Harlan knew the man was aware of what he had been doing.

The sun was going now; it had become a golden, blazing ball which was sinking over the peaks of some distant mountains, its fiery rays stabbing the pale azure of the sky with brilliantly glowing shafts that threw off ever-changing seas of color that blended together in perfect harmony.

Harlan alternately watched the wounded man and Laskar.

Laskar was still groaning, and finally Harlan walked to him and pushed him with a contemptuous foot.

“Get up, you sneak!” he ordered. And Laskar, groaning, holding his chest—where Purgatory’s hoofs had struck him—staggered to his feet and looked with piteously pleading eyes at the big man who stood near him, unmoved by the spectacle of suffering he presented.

And when he found that Harlan gave him no sympathy, he cursed horribly. This drew a cold threat from Harlan.

“Shut your rank mouth or I’ll turn Purgatory loose on you—again. Lookin’ for sympathy, eh? How much sympathy did you give that hombre who’s cashin’ in behind the rocks? None—damn you!”

It was the first flash of feeling Harlan had exhibited, and Laskar shrank from him in terror.

But Harlan followed him, grasping him by a shoulder and gripping it with iron fingers, so that Laskar screamed with pain.

“Who is that man?” Harlan motioned toward the rock.

“Lane Morgan. He owns the Rancho Seco—about forty miles south of Lamo,” returned Laskar after a long look into Harlan’s eyes.

“Who set you guys onto him—what you wantin’ him for?”

“I don’t know,” whined Laskar. “Day before yesterday Dolver an’ me meets up in Lamo, an’ Dolver asks me to help him give Morgan his pass-out checks on the ride over to Pardo—which Morgan’s intendin’ to make. I ain’t got any love for Morgan, an’ so I took Dolver up.”

“You’re a liar!”

Harlan’s fingers were sinking into Laskar’s shoulder again, and once more the man screamed with pain and impotent fury.

“I swear—” began Laskar.

Harlan’s grin was bitterly contemptuous. He placed the other hand on Laskar’s shoulder and forced the man to look into his eyes.

“You’re a liar, but I’m lettin’ you off. You’re a sneak with Greaser blood in you. I don’t ever want to see you again. I’m goin’ to Lamo—soon as this man Morgan cashes in. I’ll be there some time tomorrow. Lamo wouldn’t please me none if I was to find you there when I ride in. You slope, now—an’ keep on hittin’ the breeze until there ain’t no more of it. I’d blow you apart if this man Morgan was anything to me. But it ain’t my game unless I see you again.”

He watched until Laskar, still holding his chest, walked to where the two horses were concealed, and mounted one of them. When Laskar, leaning over the pommel of the saddle, had grown dim in the haze that was settling over the desert, Harlan scowled and returned to the wounded man.

To his astonishment, Morgan was conscious—and a cold calmness seemed to have come over him. His eyes were filled with a light that told of complete knowledge and resignation. He half smiled as Harlan knelt beside him.

“I’m about due, I reckon,” he said. “I heard you talkin’ to the man you just let get away. It don’t make any difference—about him. I reckon he was just a tool, anyway. There’s someone behind this bigger than Dolver an’ that man Laskar. He didn’t tell you?”

Harlan shook his head negatively, watching the other intently.

“I didn’t reckon he would,” said Morgan. “But there’s somebody.” He gazed long into Harlan’s face, and the latter gazed steadily back at him. He seemed to be searching Harlan’s face for signs of character.

Harlan stood the probing glance well—so that at last Morgan smiled, saying slowly: “It’s funny—damned funny. About faces, I mean. Your reputation—it’s bad. I’ve been hearin’ about you for a couple of years now. An’ I’ve been lookin’ at you an’ tryin’ to make myself say, ‘Yes, he’s the kind of a guy which would do the things they say he’s done.’

“I can’t make myself say it; I can’t even make myself think it. Either you’re a mighty good actor, or you’re the worst-judged man I ever met. Which is it?”

“Mostly all of us get reputations we don’t deserve,” said Harlan lowly.

Morgan’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction. “Meanin’ that you don’t deserve yours?” he said.

“I reckon there’s been a heap of lyin’ goin’ on about me.”

For a long time Morgan watched the other, studying him. The long twilight of the desert descended and found them—Morgan staring at Harlan; the latter enduring the gaze—for he knew that the end would not long be delayed.

At last Morgan sighed.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve got to take a chance on you. An’, somehow, it seems to me that I ain’t takin’ much of a chance, either. For a man that’s supposed to be the hell-raisin’ outlaw that folks say you are, you’ve got the straightest eyes I ever seen. I’ve seen killers—an’ outlaws, an’ gun-fighters, an’ I never seen one that could look at a man like you’ve looked at me. Harlan,” he went on slowly, “I’m goin’ to tell you about some gold I’ve hid—a hundred thousand dollars!”

Keenly, suspicion lurking deep in his eyes, his mouth half open, seemingly ready to snap shut the instant he detected greed or cupidity in Harlan’s eyes, he watched the latter.

It seemed that he expected Harlan to betray a lust for the gold he had mentioned; and he was ready to close his lips and to die with his secret. And when he saw that apparently Harlan was unmoved, that he betrayed, seemingly, not the slightest interest, that even his eyelids did not flicker at his words, nor his face change color—Morgan drew a tremulous sigh.

“You’ve got me guessin’,” he confessed weakly. “I don’t know whether you’re a devil or a saint.”

“I ain’t claimin’ nothin’,” said Harlan. “An’ I ain’t carin’ a damn about your gold. I’d a heap rather you wouldn’t mention it. More than one man has busted his character chasin’ that rainbow.”

“You ain’t interested?” demanded Morgan.

“Not none.”

Morgan’s eyes glowed with an eager light. For now that Harlan betrayed lack of interest, Morgan was convinced—almost—that the man’s reputation for committing evil deeds had been exaggerated.

“You’ve got to be interested,” he declared, lifting himself on his good arm and leaning toward Harlan. “It ain’t the gold that is botherin’ me so much, anyway—it’s my daughter.

“It’s all my own fault, too,” he went on when he saw Harlan’s eyes quicken. “I’ve felt all along that somethin’ was wrong, but I didn’t have sense enough to look into it. An’ now, trustin’ folks so much, an’ not payin’ strict attention to what was goin’ on around me, I’ve got to the point where I’ve got to put everything into the hands of a man I never saw before—an outlaw.”

“There ain’t nobody crowdin’ you to put anything into his hands,” sneered Harlan. “I ain’t a heap anxious to go around buttin’ into trouble for you. Keep your yap shut, an’ die like a man!”

Morgan laughed, almost triumphantly. “I’ll do my dyin’ like a man, all right—don’t be afraid of that. You want to hear what I’ve got to tell you?”

“I’ve got to listen. Shoot!”

“There’s a gang of outlaws operatin’ in the Lamo country. Luke Deveny is the chief. It’s generally known that Deveny’s the boss, but he keeps his tracks pretty well covered, an’ Sheriff Gage ain’t been able to get anything on him. Likely Gage is scared of him, anyway.

“Anyway, Gage don’t do nothin’. Deveny’s a bad man with a gun; there ain’t his equal in the Territory. He’s got a fellow that runs with him—Strom Rogers—who’s almost as good as he is with a gun. They’re holy terrors; they’ve got the cattlemen for two hundred miles around eatin’ out of their hands. They’re roarin’, rippin’ devils!

“There ain’t no man knows how big their gang is—seems like half the people in the Lamo country must belong to it. There’s spies all around; there ain’t a thing done that the outlaws don’t seem to know of it. They drive stock off right in front of the eyes of the owners; they rob the banks in the country; they drink an’ kill an’ riot without anyone interferin’.

“There ain’t anyone knows where their hang-out is—no one seems to know anything about them, except that they’re on hand when there’s any devilment to be done.

“I’ve got to talk fast, for I ain’t got long. I’ve never had any trouble with Deveny or Rogers, or any of the rest of them, because I’ve always tended to my own business. I’ve seen the thing gettin’ worse an’ worse, though; an’ I ought to have got out of there when I had a chance. Lately there ain’t been no chance. They watch me like a hawk. I can’t trust my men. The Rancho Seco is a mighty big place, an’ I’ve got thirty men workin’ for me. But I can’t trust a damned one of them.

“About a year ago I found some gold in the Cisco Mountains near the ranch. It was nugget gold—only a pocket. I packed it home, lettin’ nobody see me doin’ it; an’ I got it all hid in the house, except the last batch, before anybody knowed anything about it. Then, comin’ home with the last of it, the damned bottom had to bust out of the bag right near the corral gate, where Meeder Lawson, my foreman, was standin’ watchin’ me.

“It turned out that he’d been watchin’ me for a long time. I never liked the cuss, but he’s a good cowman, an’ I had to hold onto him. When he saw the gold droppin’ out an’ hittin’ the ground like big hailstones, he grinned that chessie-cat grin he’s got, an’ wanted to know if I was through totin’ it home.

“I wanted to know how he knowed there was more of it, an’ he said he’d been keepin’ an eye on me, an’ knowed there was a heap more of it somewhere around.

“I fired him on the spot. There’d have been gunplay, but I got the drop on him an’ he had to slope. Well, the next mornin’ Luke Deveny rode up to where I was saddlin’, an’ told me I’d have to take Lawson back.

“I done so, for I knowed there’d be trouble with the outlaws if I didn’t. I ain’t never been able to get any of that gold to the assayer. They’ve been watchin’ me like buzzards on a limb over some carrion. I don’t get out of their sight.

“An’ now they’ve finally got me. I’ve got a little of the gold in my pocket now—here it is.” He drew out a small buckskin bag and passed it to Harlan, who took it and held it loosely in his hands, not taking his gaze from Morgan.

“Keep a-goin’,” suggested Harlan.

“Interested, eh?” grinned Morgan; “I knowed you’d be. Well, here I am—I didn’t get to the assay office at Pardo; an’ I’ll never get there now.” He paused and then went on:

“Now they’re after Barbara, my daughter. Deveny—an’ Strom Rogers, an’ some more—all of them, I reckon. I ought to have got out long ago. But it’s too late now, I reckon.

“That damned Deveny—he’s a wolf with women. Handsome as hell, with ways that take with most any woman that meets him. An’ he’s as smooth an’ cold an’ heartless as the devil himself. He ain’t got no pity for nobody or nothin’. An’ Strom Rogers runs him a close second. An’ there’s more of them almost as bad.

“They watch every trail that runs from the Rancho Seco to—to anywhere. If I ride north there’s someone watchin’ me. If I ride south there’s a man on my trail. If I go east or west I run into a man or two who’s takin’ interest in me. When I go to Lamo, there’ll be half a dozen men strike town about the same time.

“I can’t prove they are Deveny’s men—but I know it, for they’re always around. An’ it’s the same way with Barbara—she can’t go anywhere without Deveny, or Rogers—or some of them—ain’t trailin’ her.

“As I said, the sheriff can’t do anything—or he won’t. He looks worried when I meet him, an’ gets out of my way, for fear I’ll ask him to do somethin’.

“That’s the way it stands. An’ now Barbara will have to play it a lone hand against them. Bill Morgan—that’s my son—ain’t home. He’s gallivantin’ around the country, doin’ some secret work for the governor. Somethin’ about rustlers an’ outlaws. He ought to be home now, to protect Barbara. But instead he’s wastin’ his time somewheres else when he ought to be here—in Lamo—where’s there’s plenty of the kind of guys he’s lookin’ for.

“There’s only one man in the country I trust. He’s John Haydon, of the Star ranch—about fifteen miles west of the Rancho Seco. Seems to me that Haydon’s square. He’s an upstandin’ man of about thirty, an’ he’s dead stuck on Barbara. Seems to me that if it wasn’t for Haydon, Deveny, or Lawson, or Rogers, or some of them scum would have run off with Barbara long ago.

“You see how she shapes up?” he queried as he watched Harlan’s face.

“Looks bad for Barbara,” said Harlan slowly.

Morgan writhed and was silent for a time.

“Look here, Harlan,” he finally said; “you’re considered to be a hell-raiser yourself, but I can see in your eyes that you ain’t takin’ advantage of women. An’ Harlan”—Morgan’s voice quavered—“there’s my little Barbara all alone to take care of herself with that gang of wolves around. I’m wantin’ you to go to the Rancho Seco an’ look around. My wife died last year. There’s mebbe two or three guys around the ranch would stick to Barbara, but that’s all. Take a look at John Haydon, an’ if you think he’s on the level—an’ you want to drift on—turn things over to him.”

Morgan shuddered, and was silent for a time, his lips tight-shut, his face whitening in the dusk as he fought the pain that racked him. When he at last spoke again his voice was so weak that Harlan had to kneel and lean close to him to hear the low-spoken words that issued from between his quavering lips:

“Harlan—you’re white; you’ve got to be white—to Barbara! That paper I was tryin’ to stuff into my gun—when you come around the rock. You take it. It’ll tell you where the gold is. You’ll find my will—in my desk in my office—off the patio. Everything goes to Barbara. Everybody knows that. Haydon knows it—Deveny’s found it out. You can’t get me back—it’s too far. Plant me here—an’ tell Barbara.” He laughed hollowly. “I reckon that’s all.” He felt for one of Harlan’s hands, found it, and gripped it with all his remaining strength. His voice was hoarse, quavering:

“You won’t refuse, Harlan? You can’t refuse! Why, my little Barbara will be all alone, man! What a damned fool I’ve been not to look out for her!”

Night had come, and Morgan could not see Harlan’s face. But he was conscious of the firm grip of Harlan’s hands, and he laughed lowly and thankfully.

“You’ll do it—for Barbara—won’t you? Say you will, man! Let me hear you say it—now!”

“I’m givin’ you my word,” returned Harlan slowly. And now he leaned still closer to the dying man and whispered long to him.

When he concluded Morgan fought hard to raise himself to a sitting posture; he strained, dragging himself in the sand in an effort to see Harlan’s face. But the black desert night had settled over them, and all Morgan could see of Harlan was the dim outlines of his head.

“Say it again, man! Say it again, an’ light a match so’s I can see you while you’re sayin’ it!”

There was a pause. Then a match flared its light revealing Harlan’s face, set in serious lines.

“I wouldn’t lie to you—now—Morgan,” he said; “I’m goin’ to the Lamo country to bust up Deveny’s gang.”

Morgan stared hard at the other while the flickering light lasted with a strained intensity that transfigured his face, suffusing it with a glow that could not have been more eloquent with happiness had the supreme Master of the universe drawn back the mysterious veil of life to permit him to look upon the great secret.

When the match flickered and went out, and the darkness of the desert reigned again, Morgan sank back with a tremulous, satisfied sigh.

“I’m goin’ now,” he said; “I’m goin’—knowin’ God has been good to me.” He breathed fast, gaspingly. And for a moment he spoke hurriedly, as though fearful he would not be given time to say what he wanted to say:

“Someone plugged me—last night while I was sleepin’. Shot me in the chest—here. Didn’t give me no chance. There was three of them. My fire had gone out an’ I couldn’t see their faces. Likely Laskar an’ Dolver was two. The other one must have sloped. It was him shot me. Tried to knife me, too; but I fought him, an’ he broke away. It happened behind a rock—off to the left—a red boulder.

“I grabbed at him an’ caught somethin’. What it was busted. I couldn’t wait to find out what it was. I’m hopin’ it’s somethin’ that’ll help you to find out who the man was. I ain’t goin’ to be mean—just when I’m dyin’; but if you was to look for that thing, find it, an’ could tell who the man is, mebbe some day you’d find it agreeable to pay him for what he done to me.”

He became silent; no sound except his fast, labored breathing broke the dead calm of the desert night.

“Somethin’ more than the gold an’ Barbara back of it all,” he muttered thickly, seeming to lapse into a state of semiconsciousness in which the burden that was upon his mind took the form of involuntary speech: “Somethin’ big back of it—somethin’ they ain’t sayin’ nothin’ about. But Harlan—he’ll take care of—” He paused; then his voice leaped. “Why, there’s Barbara now! Why, honey, I thought—I—why——”

His voice broke, trailing off into incoherence.

After a while Harlan rose to his feet. An hour later he found the red rock Morgan had spoken of—and with a flaming bunch of mesquite in hand he searched the vicinity.

In a little depression caused by the heel of a boot he came upon a glittering object, which he examined in the light of the flaming mesquite, which he had thrown into the sand after picking up the glittering object. Kneeling beside the dying flame he discovered that the glittering trifle he had found was a two- or three-inch section of gold watch chain of peculiar pattern. He tucked it into a pocket of his trousers.

Later, he mounted Purgatory and fled into the appalling blackness, heading westward—the big black horse loping easily.

The first streaks of dawn found Purgatory drinking deeply from the green-streaked moisture of Kelso’s water-hole. And when the sun stuck a glowing rim over the desert’s horizon, to resume his rule over the baked and blighted land, the big black horse and his rider were traveling steadily, the only life visible in the wide area of desolation—a moving blot, an atom behind which was death and the eternal, whispered promise of death.

CHAPTER III

A GIRL WAITS

Lamo, sprawling on a sun-baked plain perhaps a mile from the edge of the desert, was one of those towns which owed its existence to the instinct of men to foregather. It also was indebted for its existence to the greed of a certain swarthy-faced saloon-keeper named Joel Ladron, who, anticipating the edict of a certain town marshal of another town that shall not be mentioned, had piled his effects into a prairie schooner—building and goods—and had taken the south trail—which would lead him wherever he wanted to stop.

It had chanced that he had stopped at the present site of Lamo. Ladron saw a trail winding over the desert, vanishing into the eastern distance; and he knew that where trails led there were sure to be thirsty men who would be eager to look upon his wares.

Ladron’s history is not interesting. As time fled to the monotonous clink of coins over the bar he set up in the frame shack that faced the desert trail, Ladron’s importance in Lamo was divided by six.

The other dispensers had not come together; they had appeared as the needs of the population seemed to demand—and all had flourished.

Lamo’s other buildings had appeared without ostentation. There were twenty of them. A dozen of the twenty, for one reason or another, need receive no further mention. Of the remaining few, one was occupied by Sheriff Gage; two others by stores; one answered as an office and storage-room for the stage company; and still another was distinguished by a crude sign which ran across its weather-beaten front, bearing the legend: “Lamo Eating-House.” The others were private residences.

Lamo’s buildings made some pretense of aping the architecture of buildings in other towns. The eating-house was a two-story structure, with an outside stairway leading to its upper floor. It had a flat roof and an adobe chimney. Its second floor had been subdivided into lodging-rooms. Its windows were small, grimy.

Not one of Lamo’s buildings knew paint. The structures, garish husks of squalor, befouled the calm, pure atmosphere, and mocked the serene majesty of nature.

For, beginning at the edge of “town,” a contrast to the desert was presented by nature. It was a mere step, figuratively, from that land from which came the whisper of death, to a wild, virgin section where the hills, the green-brown ridges, the wide sweeps of plain, and the cool shadows of timber clumps breathed of the promise, the existence, of life.

To Barbara Morgan, seated at one of the east windows of the Lamo Eating-House—in the second story, where she could look far out into the desert—the contrast between the vivid color westward and the dun and dead flatness eastward, was startling. For she knew her father had entered the desert on his way to Pardo, on some business he had not mentioned; and the whispered threat that the desert carried was borne to her ears as she watched.

On a morning, two days before, Morgan had left the Rancho Seco for Pardo. The girl had watched him go with a feeling—almost a conviction—that she should have kept him at home. She had not mentioned to him that she had a presentiment of evil, for she assured herself that she should have outgrown those puerile impulses of the senses. And yet, having watched him depart, she passed a sleepless night, and early the next morning had saddled her horse to ride to Lamo, there to await her father’s return.

It was late in the afternoon when she reached Lamo; and she had gone directly to the Eating-House, where she had passed another restless night—spending most of her time sitting at the window, where she was at this minute.

Of course it was a three-day trip to Pardo, and she had no reason to expect Morgan to return until the end of the sixth day, at the very earliest. And yet some force sent her to the window at frequent intervals, where she would sit, as now, her chin resting in her hands, her eyes searching the vast waste land with an anxious light.

An attaché of the Eating-House had put her horse away—where, she did not know; and her meals had been brought to her by a middle-aged slattern, whose probing, suspicion-laden glances had been full of mocking significance. She had heard the woman speak of her to other female employees of the place—and once she had overheard the woman refer to her as “that stuck-up Morgan heifer.”

Their coarse laughter and coarser language had disgusted the girl, and she had avoided them all as much as possible.

It was the first time she had remained overnight in the Eating-House lodging-rooms, though she had seen the building many times during her visits to Lamo. It wasn’t what she was accustomed to at the Rancho Seco, nor was it all that a lodging-house might be—but it provided shelter for her while she waited.

The girl felt—as she looked—decidedly out of place in the shabby room. Many times during her vigil she had shuddered when looking at the dirty, threadbare ingrain carpet on the floor of the room; oftener, when her gaze went to the one picture that adorned the unpapered walls, she shrank back, her soul filled with repugnance.

Art, as here represented, was a cheap lithograph in vivid colors, of an Indian—an Apache, judging from his trappings—scalping a white man. In the foreground, beside the man, was a woman, her hair disheveled, wild appeal in her eyes, gazing at the Indian, who was grinning at her.

A cheap bureau, unadorned, with a broken mirror swinging in a rickety frame; one chair, and the bed in which she had tried to sleep, were the only articles of furniture in the room.

The girl, arrayed in a neat riding habit; her hair arranged in graceful coils; her slender, lissom figure denoting youth and vigor; the clear, smooth skin of her face—slightly tanned—indicating health—was as foreign to her present surroundings as life is foreign to the desert. In her direct eyes was the glow of sturdy honesty that had instantly antagonized the slattern who had attended her.

That glow was not so pronounced now—it was dulled by anxiety as she looked out of the window, watching the desert light fade as twilight came, blotting the hot sand from her sight, erasing the straight, unfeatured horizon, and creating a black void which pulsed with mystery.

She sighed when at last she could no longer penetrate the wall of darkness; got up and moved her chair to one of the front windows, from where she could look down into Lamo’s one street.

Lamo’s lights began to flicker; from the town’s buildings sounds began to issue—multisonous, carrying the message of ribaldry unrestrained.

From a point not very far away came the hideous screeching of a fiddle, accompanied by a discordant, monotonous wail, as of someone singing a song unfamiliar to him; from across the street floated a medley of other noises, above which could be heard the jangling music of a heavily drummed piano. There came to her ears coarse oaths and the maudlin laughter of women.

She had heard it all the night before; but tonight it seemed that something had been added to the volume of it. And as on the night before, she sat at the window, watching—for it was all new and strange to her—even if unattractive. But at last the horror of it again seized her, and she closed the window, determined to endure the increased heat.

Half an hour later, lying, fully dressed, on the bed, she heard a voice in the hallway beyond the closed door of her room—a man’s voice.

“It isn’t what one might call elegant,” said the voice; “but if it’s the best you’ve got—why, of course, it will have to do.”

The girl sat straight up in bed, breathless, her face paling.

“It’s Luke Deveny!” she gasped in a suffocating whisper.

The man’s voice was answered by a woman’s—low, mirthful. The girl in the room could not distinguish the words. But the man spoke again—in a whisper which carried through the thin board partition to the girl:

“Barbara Morgan is in there—eh?” he said and the girl could almost see him nodding toward her room.

This time the girl heard the woman’s voice—and her words:

“Yes she’s there, the stuck-up hussy!”

The voice was that of the slattern.

The man laughed jeeringly.

“Jealous, eh?” he said. “Well, she is a mighty good-looking girl, for a fact!”

That was all. The girl heard Deveny step into a room—the room adjoining hers; she could hear his heavy boots striking the floor as he removed them.

For a long time the girl rested on her elbow, listening; but no further sounds came from the room into which Deveny had gone. At last, trembling, her face white with fear, the girl got up and stole noiselessly to the door.

A light bolt was the door’s only fastening; and the girl stood long, with a hand upon it, considering its frailty. How easy it would be for a big man like Deveny to force the door. One shove of his giant shoulder and the bolt would give.

Stealthily, noiselessly, straining with every ounce of her strength, she managed to lift the cheap bureau and carry it to the door, placing it against the latter, barricading it. Not satisfied, she dragged the bed over against the bureau.

Even when that had been accomplished, she was not satisfied and during the greater part of the night she sat on the edge of the bed, listening and watching the door. For in the days that had fled Deveny had said certain things to her that she had not repeated to her father; he had looked at her with a significance that no man could have understood; and there had been a gleam in his eyes at these times which had convinced her that behind the bland smoothness of him—back of the suave politeness of his manner—was a primitive animalism. His suave politeness was a velvet veil of character behind which he masked the slavering fangs of the beast he really was.

CHAPTER IV

HIS SHADOW BEFORE

At ten o’clock the following morning, in a rear room of “Balleau’s First Chance” saloon—which was directly across the street from the Lamo Eating-House—Luke Deveny and two other men were sitting at a card-table with bottle and glasses between them. A window in the eastern side of the room gave the men an unobstructed view of the desert, and for half an hour, as they talked and drank, they looked out through the window.

A tall, muscular man with a slightly hooked nose, keen blue eyes with a cold glint in them, black hair, and an equally black mustache which revealed a firm-lipped mouth with curves at the corners that hinted of cynicism, and, perhaps cruelty, was sitting at the table so that he faced the window. His smile, as he again glanced out of the window, roved to Deveny—who sat at his right.

“One man—an’ a led horse,” he said shortly. “Looks like Laskar.”

Deveny—big, smooth-shaven—with black, glowing, attractive eyes that held a glint quite as hard as that which shone in the eyes of the speaker, looked long out of the window at a moving dot on the desert, which seemed to be traveling toward them. Deveny had looked before; but now he saw two dots where at other times he had seen only one. His lips held a slight pout as he glanced at the speaker.

“You’re right, Rogers,” he said; “there’s only one. The old fool must have put up a fight.”

Deveny filled a glass from the bottle and drank slowly. His features were large. His nose was well shaped, with wide nostrils that hinted of a fiery, passionate nature; his thrusting chin and the heavy neck muscles told of strength, both mental and physical—of mental strength that was of a tenacious character, of physical strength that would respond to any demand of the will.

He was handsome, and yet the suggestion of ruthlessness in the atmosphere of him—lurking behind the genial, easy-going exterior that he wore for appearances—or because it was his nature to conceal his passions until he desired to unleash them—was felt by those who knew him intimately. It had been felt by Barbara Morgan.

Deveny was king of the lawless element in the Lamo section. The magnetism of him; the arrogance, glossed over with the calm and cold politeness of his manner; his unvarying immaculateness; the air of large and complete confidence which marked his every action; the swiftness with which he struck when he was aroused, or when his authority was questioned, placed him without dissent at the head of the element that ruled the Lamo country.

Deveny ruled, but Deveny’s rule was irksome to Strom Rogers—the man to whom Deveny had just spoken. For while Deveny drank, Rogers watched him with covert vigilance, with a jeering gleam far back in his eyes, with a secret envy and jealousy, with hatred and contempt and mockery.

Yet there was fear in Rogers’ eyes, too—a mere glimmer of it. Yet it was there; and when Deveny set his glass down and looked straight at Rogers, it was that fear which brought the fawning, insincere smirk to Rogers’ lips.

“See the girl?” questioned Rogers.

Deveny laughed lowly. Apparently he did not notice the glow in Rogers’ eyes; but had Rogers looked closely he might have seen Deveny’s lips straighten as he shot a glance at the other.

“Had the room next to her last night. Heard her drag the bed in front of the door of her room. She knew I was there, all right!” Deveny laughed deeply. “She’s wised up by this time. Lolly Kaye hates her—because Barbara’s a good-looking girl, I suppose. That’s like some women. Lolly would see Barbara roasting in hell and not give her a hand!”

“Lolly’s been disappointed in love—I reckon.” Rogers’ laugh was hollow, mirthless. And again Deveny shot a glance at him.

“But you didn’t bother her—Barbara?” questioned Rogers in a dry, light voice.

“No,” grinned Deveny; “that time hasn’t come—yet. It’s coming soon. I told Lolly to keep an eye on her; I’ve got Engle and Barthman and Kelmer watching at the doors so Barbara can’t light out for the Rancho Seco. She don’t get away until tomorrow. Then she goes with me to the end of Sunset Trail. I’ve sent Shorty Mallo to Willow’s Wells for the parson.”

“Barbara know what’s up?” Rogers’ voice was low and throaty.

Again Deveny glanced at him—sharply.

“Hell, no!” he snapped. “It’s none of her damned business—nor anybody’s!” He grinned maliciously when he saw Rogers’ face whiten.

“Barbara will need a husband now,” Deveny went on. “With old Morgan gone and her brother sloped from the home ranch, she’ll be kind of lonesome. I aim to cure her of that.”

He laughed, and Rogers writhed inwardly. For Rogers had long nursed a secret hope that one day the fates might take a notion to give him the chance that Deveny intended to seize.

But Rogers was forced to conceal his jealousy and disappointment. He laughed mirthlessly.

“So she can’t get away, eh?—she’s corralled!”

“Bah!” declared Deveny; “she won’t want to get away—once she knows what I mean—that it’s going to be a regular wedding. She’ll raise a fuss, most likely, to make folks believe she’s unwilling, but in the end she’ll get over it.”

Deveny glanced out of the window at the blot that was now closer.

“It’s Laskar, all regular,” he said. “He’s leading a sorrel horse—Dolver’s horse. Old Morgan got Dolver—looks like, the damned old gopher! Men as willing as Dolver are not found every day.” He looked at the third man, who had not spoken.

“Lawson,” he said, “you mosey down the trail a little piece and meet Laskar. Bring him here!”

Lawson, a thin-faced, medium-sized man with narrow shoulders, whose distinguishing mark was a set of projecting upper teeth that kept his mouth in a continual smirking smile, got up quickly and went out. Deveny and Rogers, their thoughts centered upon the same person—Barbara Morgan—sat silent, watching Lawson as he rode down the street toward the point where the trail, crossing the broken stretch of country that intervened, merged into the desert.

Half an hour later Laskar, holding his chest, where Purgatory had kicked him, was sitting at the table in the rear room of the First Chance, cursing with a fluency that he had not yielded to in many years.

“Dolver’s wiped out!” he gasped hoarsely; “plugged so quick he didn’t know he was hit. A center shot—plumb in the heart; his own gun goin’ off while he was fallin’. I looked him over—after. He was croaked complete. Then that sober-faced hyena lifts my gun—an’ the rifle—an’ says things to me, which I don’t try to cross him. Then he goes behind the rock—where we was havin’ it out—an’ while he’s gone I tries to git my guns from under that devil-eyed cayuse of his’n.

“An’ I don’t succeed—noways. That black devil turns on a half-dollar an’ plants his hoofs plumb in my breast-bone. If I’d been an inch nearer, or if he’d have kicked me a foot lower, or a foot higher, I’d be layin’ out there where Dolver is now, the coyotes an’ the buzzards gnawin’ at me.”

Unmoved by Laskar’s incoherence, Deveny calmly watched him. And now, when Laskar paused for breath, Deveny spoke slowly:

“A black horse, you said. How did a black horse get there? Old Morgan rode a bay when he left Lamo—Balleau says.”

“Did I say Morgan rode a black horse?” queried Laskar, knowledge in his eyes that he had a thing to tell that would blanch their faces. He grinned, still holding his chest, his glance malicious.

“Did I say a black horse?” he repeated. “Did I say Morgan rode a black horse? Morgan didn’t. Morgan rode a bay—an’ the Chief run it off after he shot Morgan. But Morgan didn’t die right away, an’ the Chief he had to slope, he said—an’ he did—leavin’ me an’ Dolver to finish old Morgan.

“We was tryin’ our damnedest when this guy on the black horse pops up out of nowhere an’ salivates Dolver.”

“Who was it?”

This was Deveny. He was now leaning forward, a pout on his lips, watching Laskar with an intent, glowering gaze.

“‘Drag’ Harlan!” shouted Laskar. His face lighted with a hideous joy as he watched the effect of his news.

“‘Drag’ Harlan! Do you hear?” he went on. “‘Drag’ Harlan, the Pardo ‘two-gun’ man! He’s headed toward Lamo. He bored Dolver, an’ he said that soon as Morgan cashed in he was hittin’ the breeze for here!”

Lawson, the man who had gone to meet Laskar, ejaculated hoarsely, and stood rigid, his mouth open, his eyes bulging. It was the involuntary expression of the astonishment and fear that had seized him. Laskar forgot the pain in his chest long enough to straighten and grin at Lawson.

Rogers’ face had changed color. He, too, had become rigid. He had been in the act of reaching for the bottle on the table, and the hand that had been extended had been suddenly drawn back, so that the hand was now midway between his body and the bottle—and the fingers were clenched. The other hand, under the table, was likewise clenched, and the muscles of his jaws were corded. Into his eyes had come a furtive, restless gleam, and his face had paled.

Deveny gave no visible sign of perturbation. He coolly reached out, grasped the bottle that Rogers had been reaching for, and poured some of the amber fluid into one of the glasses. The other men watched him silently—all of them intent to note the tremor they expected to see.

Deveny’s hand did not tremble. He noted the glances of the men—the admiration that came into their eyes as with steady muscles he raised the glass and drank—and he smiled with slight contempt.

“Coming here, eh?” he said evenly. “So he said that. Did he mention what he was coming for?”

“He didn’t mention,” replied Laskar.

“So he downed Dolver. Did he say what for?”

“Said Dolver had shot up his partner, Davey Langan—back in Pardo. Harlan was evenin’ up.”

“What do you know about Harlan?”

The question was addressed to all of them.

Rogers answered.

“He’s a bad guy—all bad. He’s an iceberg, an’ he’s got the snakiest gun-hand of any man in the country. Draws hesitatin’-like. A man don’t know when he’s goin’ to uncork his smoke-wagons. I seen him put Lefty Blandin’ out. He starts for his guns, an’ then kind of stops, trickin’ the other guy into goin’ for his. Then, before the other guy can get his gun to workin’, Harlan’s stickin’ his away, an’ the guy’s ready for the mourners.

“Harlan got his handle that way. He goes for his guns so slow an’ hesitatin’ that he seems to drag ’em out. But some way he’s always shootin’ first. An’ they always let him off because it’s mighty plain that the other guy tried to draw first.”

“I’ve heard that,” said Deveny slowly. “What’s his record?”

“Plays her a lone hand,” returned Rogers. He watched the other steadily.

Deveny toyed with a glass as he gazed out of the window. There was a cold, sullen gleam in his eyes when he finally looked at Laskar.

“You said Harlan told you he was coming here as soon as Morgan cashed in. According to that, Morgan must have been hit bad.”

“The Chief said he bored him plenty. An’ me an’ Dolver must have got him some.”

“You didn’t get a chance to search Morgan?”

“No chance—he fit like a hyena; an’ when he got behind that damned rock there was no way of gettin’ at him.”

“Then,” said Deveny, “according to what you say, Harlan will come here as soon as Morgan dies. And when you left there Morgan was in a bad way. Harlan is due most any time, then.”

“That’s the way I figger,” agreed Laskar.

And now Laskar fidgeted. “I aim to be hittin’ the breeze now—before Harlan hits town. This climate is gettin’ unhealthy for me. Harlan give me notice.”

“To leave town?”

It was Deveny who spoke. There was a snarl in his voice; he leaned forward and scowled at Laskar.

Laskar nodded.

Rogers cleared his throat, and Lawson moved his feet uneasily.

Deveny’s scowl faded; he grinned coldly.

“Giving orders—is he?” he snapped. “Well, we’ll see.” He laughed. “When Harlan hits town it will be a sign that old Morgan’s crossed the Divide. Well, there was no witnesses to Morgan’s cashing in, and one man’s word is as good as another’s in this country.”

“Meanin’?” questioned Rogers, noting the light in Deveny’s eyes.

“Meaning that Laskar is going—right now—to whisper into Sheriff Gage’s ear that he saw our friend, ‘Drag’ Harlan, killing old Morgan.”

Rogers got to his feet, grinning. The gleam in his eyes indicated that he felt some relief over the prospect presented by Deveny’s suggestion.

“Of course we ain’t sure Harlan means to make trouble here,” he told Deveny; “but it’s just as well to shove him off onto the sheriff.”

The four men walked to the front door of the First Chance, after pausing for a few minutes at the bar.

Outside, halting for an instant on the board platform in front of the saloon, Rogers, who had been the first to emerge, started as he glanced toward the desert, and then stood rigid, shading his hands with his eyes against the sun that poured into his face.

“He’s comin’ now!” he said.

Deveny and the others also looked into the blinding glare of the sun—likewise shading their eyes. And they saw, far out upon the vast sea of sand—yet not so far that they could not distinguish objects—a black horse coming steadily toward them.

Deveny was strangely silent, glowering toward the desert; Rogers folded his arms and faced the oncoming rider and the somber-coated animal he bestrode; Lawson scowled; and Laskar nervously estimated the distance that stretched between himself and the steady-eyed man who had told him certain things in a voice that had been entirely convincing.

CHAPTER V

A PRISON

Barbara Morgan had not been able to sleep except by fits and starts. A dozen times during the night she had caught herself on the verge of sinking into deep slumber, and each time she had got up and washed her eyes with some water from a pitcher on the bureau, determined that she would not take any chances of permitting Deveny to surprise her.

When the dawn came she was haggard and tired; and she got up listlessly, combed her hair, and washed her face, and dragged away the pieces of furniture that had formed the barricade at the door.

She felt more secure with the dawn, and when the sunlight began to stream into the east windows she opened the door of the room, descended the stairs, and took a short walk to the edge of town.

Returning, she saw a man arrayed in overalls, boots, a blue woolen shirt, and broad felt hat, standing in the doorway of the stable that, she felt, belonged to the Eating-House. Sight of the stable brought to her thoughts of her horse—Billy—and she decided to determine if the man who had taken charge of him had put him into the stable.

She paused before the door, directly in front of the man, who did not move aside to permit her to enter.

She thought at first that he was not aware of her desire—until she observed an amused light in his eyes; and then she knew that he was purposely barring her way.

“This is the Eating-House stable, I suppose?” she inquired quietly.

“You’re supposin’ is a heap correct, ma’am,” grinned the man.

“Well,” she said, “if you will kindly step aside I shall see if my horse is all right.”

“Your horse is all right, ma’am,” returned the man. “I’ve just fed him.”

Irritated by his attitude, she spoke sharply:

“Step aside, please; I am going into the stable!”

The man grinned widely. “It’s ag’in’ orders, ma’am; you’ll have to stay out.”

“Whose orders?”

“Deveny’s. You ain’t to go into the stable.”

She hesitated, afflicted with a queer sensation of weakness and indecision.

It was her fear of Deveny, she supposed, that made her feel that way, together with the conviction that Deveny must have known that she had been in the room next to the one he had taken, even before he had ascended the stairs. It seemed to her that this deliberate interference with her must be inspired by evil intentions, and for an instant panic overtook her.

Then, yielding to the flash of anger that surged over her, she drew the small revolver she always carried with her on her rides, and presented it. She stepped back a little, so that the man might not strike the weapon from her hand, and spoke shortly, commandingly to him.

“Get away from that door!”

“Shootin’, ma’am?” he drawled. “Oh, don’t!”

He grinned at her and calmly began to roll a cigarette, at which action she gulped with dismay, wheeled swiftly, and walked to the stairs. She went up proudly enough, her head held high, for she divined that the man would be watching her. But when she entered her room her pride forsook her, and she sank into a chair by the east window, dismayed and frightened.

While she sat there the slatternly woman slowly opened the door and stuck her head in. She grinned widely at Barbara.

“Goin’ ridin’ this mawnin’, deary?”

Barbara looked at her, saw the mockery in the jealous eyes, and turned her head again, making no reply.

“Too stuck up to talk, eh?” jibed the slattern. “Well, before you get out of here you’ll be tickled enough to shoot off your gab. Bah! You an’ your airs! If you want any grub this mawnin’ you’ll come down an’ grab it yourself, I’m tellin’ you that.”

She slammed the door, her jeering laugh penetrating the partition with hideous resonance.

After the woman had gone Barbara got up, her lips set in resolute lines.

Once in the hall she started to walk toward the stairs, when she saw the cowboy of the stable lounging against the rail on the platform. He saw her at the instant she looked at him, and he grinned hugely.

“I reckon you’ve noticed I’ve sort of shifted,” he said. “I keep goin’ up—gettin’ higher in the world.”

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Just loafin’, I reckon,” grinned the other. “An’ obeyin’ orders,” he added instantly. “Much as I hate to disconvenience a lady, I ain’t takin’ no chances on rilin’ Deveny.”

“Do you mean that Deveny placed you here to watch me?”

“He didn’t issue no particular orders as to where I was to do my standin’. But he was sure earnest about sayin’ that you wasn’t to leave your room.”

“I left it once this morning.”

“My fault,” he grinned. “I was sneakin’ a drink in the Antler, an’ you slipped me. I’m bettin’ it don’t happen ag’in!”

Overcome with a cold terror that suddenly seized her, Barbara wheeled and re-entered her room, standing for an instant at the door as she locked it, and then walking to the chair and sinking nervelessly into it.

Somehow, she sensed the futility of further effort at escape. She was aware of Deveny’s power in the country; she knew that he ruled Lamo as he ruled every foot of land in the section; and she was convinced that it would be wasted effort to call for help. Even her own sex—represented by the slattern, and most of the women in Lamo were of that type, in character—seemed to be antagonistic toward her. It seemed to her that they would mock her as the slattern had mocked her, should she appeal to them.

And as for the men of Lamo, they were not to be considered. She was certain she could not induce one of them to act contrary to Deveny’s wishes. For her father had told her about Lamo’s men—how they were slaves to the will of the man whose deeds of outlawry had made him feared wherever men congregated; and she knew Lamo itself was a sink-hole of iniquity where women were swallowed by the evil passions of men.

She might have appealed to Gage, the sheriff, and she thought of Gage while she sat at the window. But Gage, her father had told her, with disgust in his eyes, was a man of colorless personality and of little courage—a negligible character upon whom the good people of the section, who were pitifully few, could not depend. Her father had told her that it was his opinion that Gage, too, was a slave to Deveny’s will.

She wished now that she had not yielded to the impulse which had brought her to Lamo; but her lips grew firm and her eyes defiant as she at last got up and walked to one of the front windows.

Now, more vividly than ever, could she understand the significance of Deveny’s glances at her in the past; the light in his eyes had been an expression of premeditated evil, awaiting an opportunity.

She was pale, and her hands were trembling as she placed them on the sill of the front window and glanced down into the street, hoping that she might see a friendly face; praying that one of the Rancho Seco men might have come to town during the night.

But she saw no one she knew. Indeed, except for a pony standing in front of a saloon down the street a little distance, and several others hitched to a rail across the street, in front of the First Chance saloon, Lamo seemed to be deserted. And a silence, deep and portentous of evil, seemed to have settled over the town.

But as she leaned upon the sill a sound floated to her through the open window—a man’s voice, so close to her that it made her start and stiffen. It was Deveny’s voice, and it seemed to come from a point in the street directly beneath the window.

“Did you find Gage?” it said.

Barbara leaned forward a little and looked downward. Below her, on the narrow board-walk that ran in front of the Eating-House, were four men. She recognized three of them—Deveny, Strom Rogers, and Meeder Lawson, the Rancho Seco foreman.

The other man was a stranger. Evidently it was the stranger to whom Deveny had spoken, for it was the stranger who answered.

“He’s in his office now.”

Deveny turned to Lawson and Rogers. “You two wait here, Laskar and myself will do the talking to Gage.” He started away with the man who had answered him; then called back over his shoulder: “Hang around; if there’s trouble, you’ll want to get in on it.”

Deveny and Laskar walked down the street; the girl saw them enter the building occupied by the sheriff.

Wondering, intensely curious—for that word “trouble” meant shooting in the vocabulary of men of the Deveny type—Barbara drew back until she was certain the men in the street could not see her.

When Deveny and Laskar disappeared, Strom Rogers laughed sneeringly:

“Deveny’s scared of ‘Drag’ Harlan, I reckon. It’s a cheap frame-up.”

“Aw, hell,” jibed the other; “you’re jealous, that’s all. You’d like to see Harlan plug Deveny, eh; so’s you’d have a chance with Barbara Morgan. I’d be a heap careful, if I was you, Rogers. Deveny knows you took a shine to Barbara Morgan. I seen him lookin’ hostile at you when you was quizzin’ him in Balleau’s. He’s next.”

“This is a free country,” returned Rogers. The girl caught the malignant note in his voice, and she leaned outward a little, trying to see his face, while she shivered with dread.

“Yes,” laughed Lawson; “a man can cash in without any excuse, usual; all he’s got to do is to cross Deveny. You’re a damned fool, Strom, to go to takin’ a shine to Barbara Morgan, when Deveny wants her. He’s been waitin’ for her, an’ meanin’ to have her, all along. He’s only been waitin’ until ol’ Morgan cashed in, so’s he’d have a chance to take her. Now that Morgan’s dead his chance has come.”

Silently, her face dead white, her eyes closed, Barbara slipped backward and crumpled into a heap on the dirty carpet of the room.

When she again opened her eyes it was to look wildly at the open window through which the terrible news had come. Then she dragged herself to it, and making no sound leaned her arms on the sill and listened again, her heart seeming to be in the clutch of icy fingers, her brain atrophied, reeling in a chaos of incoherent, agonized impulses.

She did not know how long she had been unconscious. She saw that Rogers and Lawson were still below, and still talking. So keen was her sense of hearing—every nerve straining in the effort to learn more—that the voices of the men came in through the window with a resonance that, she felt, must be audible to every person in Lamo.

“It ain’t my style, that’s all. I’d meet Harlan on the level, man to man, if he was lookin’ for me. It’s likely he ain’t at that. I’ve heard, bad as he is, that he plays square. An’ if I was runnin’ things I’d take a look at him before chargin’ him with killin’ Lane Morgan, when the killin’ had been done by the Chief, an’ Dolver, an’ Laskar.”

It was Strom Rogers’ voice. It bore conviction with it, even though there was passionate feeling behind it, mingled strangely with personal hatred and jealousy.

Dumbly, Barbara clutched the window-sill. One dry, agonized sob racked her; and then she sat on the floor, to stare vacantly at the dingy walls of the room.

Once more she heard Rogers’ voice; this time there was a note of savage glee in it:

“There’s Harlan now, just slippin’ off his cayuse in front of Gage’s place. ‘Drag,’ eh? Well, there don’t seem to be nothin’ impedin’ his actions anywhere.”

Prompted by the urge of a curiosity that she could not resist, Barbara reeled to her feet, and with her hands resting on the window-sill leaned out and looked up the street.

In front of the sheriff’s office, not more than thirty or forty feet distant, she saw a tall, well-built man standing beside the hitching rail that fringed the board sidewalk. He had evidently just dismounted, and he was standing at the head of a big, coal-black horse. He was in the act of hitching the animal, and his back was toward her.

She watched breathlessly until he turned. And then she stared hard at him, noting the steady, cold, alert eyes; the firm lips; the bigness of him, the atmosphere of capableness that seemed to surround him; the low-swung guns at his hips, with no flaps on the holster-tops, and the bottoms of the holsters tied to his leather chaps with rawhide thongs.

Never had she seen a man like him. For some reason, as yet inexplicable to her, he brought into her troubled consciousness a feeling of cold calm, a refreshing influence that might be compared to the sweep of a cool and unexpected breeze in the middle of a hot day.

He dominated the group of men that instantly surrounded him; and the dominance was not of attire, for he was arrayed like the others. She saw Deveny standing near him, and the man Laskar behind Deveny and Sheriff Gage and several other men. And she saw Rogers and Lawson as they walked slowly toward him.

And then a realization of her loss, of the tragedy that had descended upon her, again assailed her; and a fury of intolerance against inaction seized her. She could not stay in this room and suffer the hideous uncertainty; she could not take Rogers’ word that her father had been killed. There must be some mistake. Perhaps Rogers knew she was at the window, listening, and he had said that just to spite her. For she had discouraged Rogers’ advances as she had discouraged Deveny’s.

Breathing fast, she unlocked the door and went out into the hall.

The man whom Deveny had placed to guard her was still lounging on the stair platform, and he grinned when he saw her.

“Comin’ to try ag’in?” he grinned.

She smiled—a disarming smile that brought a fatuous gleam into the man’s eyes, so that he permitted her to come close to him.

“Deveny’s got damn’ good judgment,” he said as she halted near him. “He knows a thoroughbred when he sees—Hell!”

The ejaculation came from his lips as Barbara leaped swiftly past him. He threw out a futile arm, and stood for an instant, shocked into inaction as Barbara ran down the stairs toward the street. Then the man leaped after her, cursing. She could hear him saying: “Damn your hide! Damn your hide!” as he came after her, his spurs jangling on the steps.

CHAPTER VI

CHAIN-LIGHTNING

Turning from Purgatory, after he had dismounted in front of the sheriff’s office, Harlan faced three men who stood just outside of the building, watching him.

The slightly humorous smile that curved Harlan’s lips might have betrayed his reason for dismounting in front of the sheriff’s office, for he had seen Laskar standing with the two other men. But no man could have told that he looked at Laskar directly, except Laskar himself, who would have sworn that Harlan did not remove his gaze from him, once he had slipped from Purgatory’s back.

For Harlan’s eyes told nothing. They seemed to be gazing at nothing, and at everything. For Gage, watching the man, was certain Harlan was looking directly at him as he grinned, and Deveny, like Laskar, was sure Harlan’s gaze was upon him. And all of them, noting one another’s embarrassment, stood silent, marveling.

And now Deveny discovered that Harlan was watching the three of them together—a trick which is accomplished by fixing the gaze upon some object straight in front of one; in this case it was Deveny’s collar—and then including other objects on each side of the center object.

Steady nerves and an inflexible will are required to keep the gaze unwavering, and a complete absence of self-consciousness. Thus Deveny knew he was standing in the presence of a man whose poise and self-control were marvelous; and he knew, too, that Harlan would be aware of the slightest move made by either of the three; more, he could detect any sign of concerted action.

And concerted action was what Deveny and Laskar and the sheriff had planned. And they had purposely dragged Laskar outside, expecting Harlan would do just as he had done, and as his eyes warned he intended to do.

“I’m after you, Laskar,” he said softly.

Laskar stiffened. He made no move, keeping his hands at his sides, where they had been all the time that had elapsed since Harlan had dismounted.

Laskar’s eyes moved quickly, with an inquiring flash in them, toward Deveny and the sheriff. It was time for Deveny and the sheriff to precipitate the action they had agreed upon.

But the sheriff did not move. Nor did Deveny change his position. A queer, cold chill had come over Deveny—a vague dread, a dragging reluctance—an indecision that startled him and made of his thoughts an odd jumble of half-formed impulses that seemed to die before they could become definite.

He had faced gun-fighters before, and had felt no fear of them. But something kept drumming into his ears at this instant with irritating insistence that this was not an ordinary man; that standing before him, within three paces, his eyes swimming in an unfixed vacuity which indicated preparation for violent action, was Harlan—“Drag” Harlan, the Pardo two-gun man; Harlan, who had never been beaten in a gunfight.

Could he—Deveny—beat him? Could he, now, with “Drag” Harlan watching the three of them, could he draw with any hope of success, with the hope of beating the other’s lightning hand on the downward flash to life or death?

Deveny paled; he was afraid to take the chance. His eyes wavered from Harlan’s; he cast a furtive glance at the sheriff.

Harlan caught the glance, smiled mirthlessly and spoke shortly to Laskar:

“I told you to keep hittin’ the breeze till there wasn’t any more breeze,” he said. “I ought to have bored you out there by the red rock. I gave you your chance. Flash your gun!”

“Harlan!”

This was Gage. His voice sounded as though it had been forced out: it was hoarse and hollow.

Harlan did not move, nor did his eyes waver. There was feeling in them now: intense, savage, cold. And his voice snapped.

“You’re the sheriff, eh? You want to gas, I reckon. Do it quick before this coyote goes for his gun.”

The sheriff cleared his throat. “You’re under arrest, Harlan, for killin’ Lane Morgan out there in the desert yesterday.”

Harlan’s eyes narrowed, his lips wreathed into a feline smile. But he did not change his position.

“Who’s the witness against me?”

“Laskar.”

“Has he testified?”

“He’s goin’ to.”

Harlan backed away a little. His grin was tiger-like, a yellow flame seemed to leap in his eyes. Laskar, realizing at last that he could hope for no assistance from Gage or Deveny, grew rigid with desperation.

Death was in front of him; he knew it. Death or a deathless fame. The fates had willed one or the other, and he chose to take the gambler’s chance, the chance he and Dolver and the Chief had refused Lane Morgan.

Deathless fame, the respect and the admiration of every man in the section was his if he beat “Drag” Harlan to the draw. Forever afterward, if he beat Harlan, he would be pointed at as the man who had met the Pardo gunman on even terms and had downed him.

He stepped out a little, away from the front of the building, edging off from Deveny and Gage so that Harlan would have to watch in two directions.

Lawson and Rogers, having advanced to a position within a dozen paces of the group in front of the sheriff’s office, now backed away, silent, watchful. Other men who had been standing near were on the move instantly. Some dove into convenient doorways, others withdrew to a little distance down the street. But all intently watched as Laskar showed by his actions that he intended to accept his chance.

Deveny, too, watched intently. He kept his gaze fixed upon Harlan, not even glancing toward Laskar. For Deveny’s fear had gone, now that the dread presence had centered its attention elsewhere, and he was determined to discover the secret of Harlan’s hesitating “draw,” the curious movement that had given the man his sobriquet, “Drag.” The discovery of that secret might mean much to him in the future; it might even mean life to him if Harlan decided to remain in the section.

Harlan had made no hostile movement as yet. He still stood where he had stood all along, except for the slight backward step he had taken before Laskar began to move. But he watched Laskar as the latter edged away from the other men, and when he saw Laskar’s eyes widen with the thought that precedes action, with the gleam that reflects the command the brain transmutes to the muscles, his right hand flashed downward toward the hip.

With a grunt, for Harlan had almost anticipated his thoughts, Laskar’s right hand swept toward the butt of his pistol.

But Harlan’s hand had come to a poise, just above the stock of his weapon—a pause so infinitesimal that it was merely a suggestion of a pause.

It was enough, however, to throw Laskar off his mental balance, and as he drew his weapon he glanced at Harlan’s holster.

A dozen men who watched swore afterward that Laskar drew his gun first; that it was in his hand when Harlan’s bullet struck him. But Deveny knew better; he knew that Laskar was dead on his feet before the muzzle of his weapon had cleared the holster, and that the shot he had fired had been the result of involuntary muscular action; that he had pulled the trigger after Harlan’s bullet struck him, and while his gun had been loosening in his hand.

For Deveny had seen the bullet from Laskar’s gun throw up sand at Harlan’s feet after Harlan’s weapon had sent its death to meet Laskar. And Deveny had discovered the secret of Harlan’s “draw.” The pause was a trick, of course, to disconcert an adversary. But the lightning flash of Harlan’s hand to his gun-butt was no trick. It was sheer rapidity, his hand moving so fast that the eye could not follow.

And Deveny could get no pleasure from his discovery. Harlan had waited until Laskar’s fingers were wrapped around the stock of his pistol before he had drawn his own, and therefore in the minds of those who had witnessed the shooting, Harlan had been justified.

Sheriff Gage thought so, too. For, after Laskar’s body had been carried away, Harlan stepped to where the sheriff stood and spoke shortly:

“You wantin’ me for this?”

Sheriff Gage shook his head. “I reckon everybody saw Laskar go for his gun. There was no call for him to go for his gun. If you’d have shot him without him reachin’ for it things would have been different.”

Harlan said coldly, “I’m ready for that trial, now.”

The sheriff’s eyes glowed with some secret significance as they met Harlan’s. He was standing at a little distance from Deveny, and he deliberately closed an eye at Harlan.

“Trial—hell!” he declared, “you’ve destroyed the evidence.”

Harlan wheeled, to see Deveny standing near. And for an instant as their eyes met—Harlan’s level and cold, Deveny’s aflame with a hostility unmistakable—the crowd which had witnessed the shooting of Laskar again became motionless, while a silence, portending further violence, descended over the street.

Then Deveny abruptly wheeled and began to walk across to the First Chance.

He had not taken many steps, however, when there were sounds of commotion farther down the street toward the Eating-House—a man cursing and a girl screaming.

Deveny halted and faced the point from which the sounds came, and a scowl appeared on his face.

Harlan wheeled, also. And he saw, at a little distance down the street, a girl running, her hair tossing in a mass around her, her eyes wild with fright and terror. Behind her came a man, cursing as he ran.

Harlan heard Sheriff Gage curse, too—heard him say:

“That’s Lane Morgan’s daughter—Barbara! What in hell is she doin’ here?”

The girl, not more than a dozen feet ahead of her pursuer, ran straight toward Harlan. And when—as she drew closer and he saw that she was, indeed, actually coming toward him—her eyes on him as though she had singled him out as a protector—he advanced toward her, drawing one of his guns as he went.

And, grinning as she neared him, he opened his arms wide and she ran straight into them, and laid her head on his shoulder, sobbing, and talking incoherently. While Harlan, his grin fading as he looked at her pursuer—who had halted within half a dozen paces of the girl—commanded lowly:

“You’re runnin’ plumb into a heap of trouble, mister man. Throw your rope around the snubbin’ post. Then get on your hind legs an’ do some explainin’. What you chasin’ this girl for?”

The man reddened, looked downward, then up at Deveny. The latter, a pout on his lips, his eyes glowing savagely, walked to where Harlan stood with one arm around the girl, while Lawson, Rogers, Gage, and several other men advanced slowly and stood near him.

CHAPTER VII

SINGLE-HANDED

Noting the concerted movement toward him, Harlan grinned at Barbara, gently disengaged himself from her grasp, and urged her toward the door of the sheriff’s office. She made no objection, for she felt that further trouble impended, and she knew she must not impede any action her rescuer planned.

Reaching the street a few minutes before, she had noted the preparations for the swift tragedy that had followed; and despite her wild desire to escape Deveny’s man, she had halted, fascinated by the spectacle presented by the two men, gambling with death.

She had halted at a little distance, crouching against the front of a building. And while she had been crouching there, trembling with a new apprehension, her pursuer had caught her.

She had hardly been aware of him, and his grasp on her arm she had not resisted, so intense was her interest in what was transpiring. But the sudden ending of the affair brought again into her consciousness the recollection of her own peril, and when she saw Deveny cross the street she broke from the man’s restraining grasp and ran to Harlan, convinced that he—because he seemed to be antagonistic toward the forces arrayed against her—would protect her.

And now, shrinking into the open doorway of the sheriff’s office, she watched breathlessly, with straining senses, the moving figures in the drama.

Harlan had backed a little way toward the doorway in which Barbara stood. The movement was strategic, and had been accomplished with deliberation. He was facing Lamo’s population—at least that proportion of it which was at home—with the comforting assurance that no part of it could get behind him.

The gun he had drawn upon the approach of Barbara’s pursuer was still in his right hand. It menaced no one, and yet it seemed to menace everyone within range of it.

For though the gun was held loosely in Harlan’s hand, the muzzle downward, there was a glow in the man’s eyes that conveyed a warning.

The smile on his face, too, was pregnant with the promise of violence. It was a surface smile, penetrating no deeper than his lips, and behind it, partially masked by the smile, the men in the group in the street could detect the destroying passion that ruled the man at this instant.

Deveny, who had approached to a point within a dozen feet of Harlan, came to a slow, reluctant halt when he caught a glimpse of the strange glow in Harlan’s eyes. All the others, Sheriff Gage included, likewise halted—most of them at a considerable distance, as their conceptions of prudence suggested.

Harlan’s grin grew ironic as he noted the pause—the concerted rigidity of Lamo’s population.

“Seems there’s a heap of folks wantin’ to palaver,” he said lowly. “An’ no one is crowdin’ me. That’s polite an’ proper. Seems you all sort of guessed there’s plenty of room, an’ crowdin’ ain’t necessary. I’d thank every specimen to hook his thumbs in the armholes of his vest—same as though he’s a member of the pussy-café outfit which I’ve seen in Chicago, makin’ moon-eyes at girls. If there’s any of you ain’t got on vests, why, you can fasten your sky-hooks on your shoulders any way to suit your idee of safety. Get them up!”

It seemed ludicrous to Barbara, despite the shadow of tragedy that lurked over it all—the embarrassed manner in which Lamo’s citizens complied with the command, and the spectacle they presented afterward.

Deveny’s hands were the last to go up. There was a coldly malignant glare in his eyes as under Harlan’s unwavering gaze he finally raised his hands and held them, palms outward, as for inspection.

Rogers had complied instantly. There was a smile on his face, faint and suggestive of grim amusement, for he had been mentally tortured over the contemplation of Barbara’s predicament, and had been unable to think of any plan by which he might assist her.

Meeder Lawson’s face was sullen and full of impotent rage, and he watched Deveny with a gaze of bitter accusation when he saw that the big man intended to obey Harlan’s order. Barbara’s pursuer, having felt Deveny’s angry gaze upon him, and being uncomfortably conscious that Harlan had not forgotten him, was red of face and self-conscious. He started, and the red in his face deepened, when Harlan, in the silence which followed the concerted raising of hands, spoke sharply to him:

“What was you tryin’ to corral that girl for? Talk fast or I’ll bust you wide open!”

The man grinned foolishly, shooting a furtive glance at Deveny.

“Why,” he said, noting Deveny’s scowl, “I reckon it was because I’d took a shine to her. I was tryin’ to cotton up to her on the landin’ about the Eatin’-House, an’ she——”

“You lie!”

This was Barbara. Pale, her eyes flashing with indignation, she stepped down into the street, standing near Harlan.

“That man,” Barbara went on, pointing to the red-faced pursuer, “told me early this morning that Luke Deveny had told him to watch me, that I was not to leave my room until Deveny came for me. I was a prisoner. He didn’t try to make love to me. I should have killed him.”

Speech had broken the tension under which Barbara had been laboring; the flow of words through her lips stimulated her thoughts and sent them skittering back to the salient incidents of her enforced confinement; they brought into her consciousness a recollection of the conversation she had heard between Meeder Lawson and Strom Rogers, regarding her father. She forgot Harlan, Deveny, and the others, and ran to Sheriff Gage.

Gage, a tall, slender man of forty, was pale and uncomfortable as he looked down at the girl’s white, upturned face. He shrank from the frenzied appeal of her eyes, and he endured the pain of her tightly gripping fingers on the flesh of his arms without flinching.

“Did—is father dead!”

She waited, frantically shaking Gage. And Gage did not answer until his gaze had roamed the crowd.

Then he said slowly and reluctantly:

“I reckon he’s dead. Deveny was tellin’ me—he was chargin’ this man, Harlan, with killin’ your father.”

Barbara wheeled and faced Deveny. Rage, furious and passionate, had overwhelmed the grief she felt over the death of her father. The shock had been tremendous, but it had come while she had been leaning out of the window listening to Rogers and Lawson—when she had lain for many minutes unconscious on the floor of the room. Therefore the emotion she experienced now was not entirely grief, it was rather a frantic yearning to punish the men who had killed her father.

“You charged this man with murdering my father?” she demanded of Deveny as she walked to him and stood, her hands clenched, her face dead white and her eyes blazing hate. “You know better. I heard Strom Rogers tell Meeder Lawson that it was Dolver and Laskar and somebody he called the ‘Chief,’ who did it. I want to know who those men are; I want to know where I can find them! I want you to tell me!”

“You’re unstrung, Barbara,” said Deveny slowly, coolly, a faint smile on his face. “I know nothing about it. I merely repeated to Gage the word Laskar brought. Laskar said this man Harlan shot your father. It happened about a day’s ride out—near Sentinel Rock. If Laskar lied, he was paid for his lying. For Harlan has——”

Deveny paused, the sentence unfinished, for the girl turned abruptly from him and walked to Harlan.

“That was Laskar—the man you killed just now?”

“Laskar an’ Dolver,” relied Harlan. “There was three of them your father said. One got away in the night, leavin’ Dolver an’ Laskar to finish the job. I run plumb into them, crossin’ here from Pardo. I bored Dolver, but I let Laskar off, not havin’ the heart to muss up the desert with scum like him.”

The girl’s eyes gleamed for an instant with venomous satisfaction. Then she said, tremulously:

“And father?”

“I buried him near the rock,” returned Harlan, lowly.

Soundlessly, closing her eyes, Barbara sank into the dust of the street.

Harlan broke the force of her fall with his left hand, supporting her partially until she collapsed; then, his eyes alight with a cold flame, he called, sharply, his gaze still on the group of men:

“Get her, Gage! Take her into your place!”

He waited until Gage carried the slack form inside. Then, his shoulders sagging, the heavy pistol in his right hand coming to a poise, the fingers of the left hand brushing the butt of the weapon in the holster at his left hip, the vacuous gleam in his eyes telling them all that his senses were alert to catch the slightest movement, he spoke, to Deveny:

“I seen that desert deal. It wasn’t on the level. I ain’t no angel, but when I down a man I do it fair an’ square—givin’ him his chance. I sent that sneak Dolver out—an’ that coyote Laskar. It was a dirty, rotten deal, the way they framed up on Morgan. It’s irritated me—I reckon you can hear my rattles right now. I’m stayin’ in Lamo, an’ I’m stickin’ by this Barbara girl until you guys learn to walk straight up, like men!”

He paused, and a heavy silence descended. No man moved. A sneer began to wreathe Harlan’s lips—a twisting, mocking, sardonic sneer that expressed his contempt for the men who faced him.

“Not havin’ any thoughts, eh?” he jeered. “There’s some guys that would rather do their fightin’ with women, an’ their thoughts wouldn’t sound right if they put words around them. I ain’t detainin’ you no longer. Any man who thinks it’s time to call for a show-down can do his yappin’ right now. Them that’s dead certain they’re through can mosey along, takin’ care not to try any monkey business!”

He stood, watching, his wide gaze including them all, until, one after another the men in the group silently moved away. They did not go far. Some of them merely stepped into near-by doorways, others sauntered slowly down the street and halted at a little distance to look back.

But no man made a hostile move, for they had seen the tragedy in which Laskar had figured, and they had no desire to provoke Harlan to express again the cold wrath that slumbered in his eyes.

Meeder Lawson was the first of Deveny’s intimates to leave the group. His face sullen, his eyes venomous, he walked across the street to the First Chance, and stood in the doorway, beside Balleau, who had been an interested onlooker.

Then Strom Rogers moved. He wheeled slowly, flashing an inquiring glance at Deveny—who still stood motionless. Deveny had lowered his hands—they were hanging at his sides, the right hand having the palm toward Harlan, giving eloquent testimony of its owner’s peaceable intentions.

Rogers’ glance included the out-turned palm, and his lips curved in a faint smile. The smile held as his glance went to Harlan’s face, and for an instant as the eyes of the two men met, appraisal was the emotion that ruled in them. Harlan detected in Rogers’ eyes a grim scorn of Deveny, and a malignant satisfaction; Rogers saw in Harlan’s eyes a thing that not one of the men who had faced the man had seen—cold humor.

Then Rogers was walking away, leaving Deveny to face the man who had disrupted his plans.

Deveny had not changed his position, and for an instant following the departure of Rogers, there was no word spoken. Then for the first time since he had dismounted from Purgatory, Harlan’s eyes lost their wide, inclusive vacuity. They met Deveny’s fairly, with a steady, direct, boring intensity; a light in them that resembled the yellow flame that Deveny had once seen in the eyes of a Mexican jaguar some year before at a camp on the Neuces.

Deveny knew what the light in Harlan’s eyes meant. It meant the presence of a wild, rending passion, of elemental impulses; it meant that the man who faced him was eager to kill him, was awaiting his slightest hostile movement. It meant more. The gleam in Harlan’s eyes indicated that the man possessed that strange and almost uncanny instinct of thought reading, that he could detect in another’s eyes a mental impulse before the other’s muscles could answer it. Also, it meant certain death to Deveny should he obey the half-formed determination to draw and shoot, that was in his mind at this instant.

He dropped his lids, attempting to veil the thought from Harlan. But when he again looked up it was to see Harlan’s lips twisting into a cold smile—to see Harlan slowly sheathing the gun he had held in his right hand.

And now Harlan was standing before him, both weapons in their holsters. He and Deveny were facing each other upon a basis of equality. Harlan had disdained taking advantage.

Apparently, if Deveny now elected to draw and shoot, his chances were as good as Harlan’s.

And yet Deveny knew they were not as good. For Harlan’s action in sheathing his gun convinced Deveny that the man had divined his thoughts from the expression of his eyes before he had veiled them with the lids, and he was convinced that Harlan had sensed the chill of dread that had swept over him at that instant. He was sure of it when he heard Harlan’s voice, low and taunting:

“You waitin’ for a show-down?”

Deveny smiled, pallidly. “I don’t mind telling you that I did have a notion that way a moment ago. But I was afraid I might be a little slow. When you downed Laskar I watched you, trying to learn the secret of your draw. I didn’t learn it, because there is no secret—you’re just a natural gunslinger without a flaw. You’re the fastest man with a gun I ever saw—and I’m taking my hat off to you.”

Harlan smiled faintly, but his eyes did not lose their alertness, nor did the flame in them cool visibly. Only his lips betrayed whatever emotion he felt. He distrusted Deveny, for he had seen the half-formed determination in the man’s eyes, and his muscles were tensed in anticipation of a trick.

“You didn’t stay here to tell me that. Get goin’ with the real talk.”

“That’s right—I didn’t,” said Deveny. He was cool, now, and bland, having recovered his poise.

“Higgins was watching Barbara Morgan at my orders. But I meant no harm to the girl. I knew she was in town, and I heard there were a few of the boys that were making plans about her. So I set Higgins to guard her. Naturally, she thought I meant harm to her.”

“Naturally,” said Harlan.

Deveny said coolly: “I’ll admit I have a bad reputation. But it doesn’t run to women. It’s more in your line.” He looked significantly at the other.

“Meanin’?”

“Oh, hell—you know well enough what I mean. You’re not such a law-abiding citizen, yourself. I’ve heard of you—often. And I’ve admired you. To get right down to the point—I could find a place where you’d fit in just right. We’re needing another man—a man of your general size and character.”

Harlan grinned. “I’m thankin’ you. An’ I sure appreciate what you’ve said. You’ve been likin’ me so much that you tried to frame up on me about sendin’ Lane Morgan out.”

“That’s business,” laughed Deveny. “You were an unknown quantity, then.”

“But not now—eh?” returned Harlan, his eyes gleaming with a cold humor. “You’ve got me sized up right. The yappin’ I done about stickin’ to Barbara Morgan wasn’t the real goods, eh?”

“Certainly not!” laughed Deveny, “there must be some selfish motive behind that.”

“An’ you sure didn’t believe me?”

“Of course not,” chuckled Deveny, for he thought he saw a gleam of insincerity in Harlan’s eyes.

“Then I’ve got to do my yappin’ all over again,” said Harlan. “Now get this straight. I’m stickin’ to Barbara Morgan. I’m runnin’ the Rancho Seco from now on. I’m runnin’ it my way. Nobody is botherin’ Barbara Morgan except them guys she wants to have bother her. That lets you out. You’re a rank coyote, an’ I don’t have no truck with you except at the business end of a gun. Now take your damned, sneakin’ grin over an’ wet it down, or I’ll blow you apart!”

Deveny’s face changed color. It became bloated with a poisonous wrath, his eyes gleamed evilly and his muscles tensed. He stood, straining against the murder lust that had seized him, almost persuaded to take the slender chance of beating Harlan to his weapon.

“You got notions, eh?” he heard Harlan say, jeeringly. “Well, don’t spoil ’em. I’d admire to make you feel like you’d ought to have got started a week ago.”

Deveny smiled with hideous mirthlessness. But he again caught the flame in Harlan’s eyes. He wheeled, saying nothing more, and walked across the street without looking back.

Smiles followed him; several men commented humorously, and almost immediately, knowing that this last crisis had passed, Lamo’s citizens resumed their interrupted pleasures.

Harlan stood motionless until Deveny vanished into the First Chance, then he turned quickly and entered the sheriff’s office.

CHAPTER VIII

BARBARA IS PUZZLED

Half an hour later, with Barbara Morgan, on “Billy”—a piebald pinto—riding beside him, Harlan loped Purgatory out of Lamo. They took a trail—faint and narrow—that led southward, for Barbara had said that the Rancho Seco lay in that direction.

Harlan had not seen Deveny or Rogers or Lawson after the scene in front of the sheriff’s office. He had talked for some time with Gage, waiting until Barbara Morgan recovered slightly from the shock she had suffered. Then when he had told her that he intended to accompany her to the Rancho Seco—and she had offered no objection—he had gone on a quest for her pony, finding him in the stable in the rear of the Eating-House.

So far as Harlan knew, no one in Lamo besides Sheriff Gage had watched the departure of himself and Barbara. And there had been no word spoken between the two as they rode away—Lamo becoming at last an almost invisible dot in the great yawning space they left behind them.

Barbara felt a curious unconcern for what was happening; her brain was in a state of dull apathy, resulting from shock and the period of dread under which she had lived for more than a day and a night.

She did not seem to care what happened to her. She knew, to be sure, that she was riding toward the Rancho Seco with a man whom she had heard called an outlaw by other men; she was aware that she must be risking something by accepting his escort—and yet she could not bring herself to feel that dread fear that she knew any young woman in her position should feel.

It seemed to her that nothing mattered now—very much. Her father was dead—murdered by some men—two of whom had been punished by death, and another—a mysterious person called the “Chief”—who would be killed as soon as she could find him. That resolution was deeply fixed in her mind.

Her gaze though, after a while, went to Harlan, and for many miles she studied him without his suspecting. And gradually she began to think about him, to wonder why he had protected her from the man, Higgins, and why he was going with her to the Rancho Seco.

She provided—after a while—an answer to her first question: He had protected her because she had run into his arms in her effort to escape the clutches of the man who had pursued her—Higgins. She remembered that while she had been at the window, watching Harlan when he had dismounted in front of the sheriff’s office, he had seemed to make a favorable impression upon her.

That was the reason, when she had seen him before her in the street, after he had shot Laskar, she had selected him as a protector. That had seemed to be the logical thing to do, for he had arrayed himself against her enemies in killing Laskar, and it was reasonable to suppose—conceding Laskar and Higgins were leagued with Deveny—that Harlan would protect her.

It all seemed exceedingly natural, that far. It was when she began to wonder why Harlan was with her now that an element of mystery seemed to rule. And she was puzzled.

She began to speculate over Harlan, and her mental efforts in that direction banished the somber thoughts that had almost overwhelmed her after the discovery of her father’s death. Yet they had ridden more than ten miles before she spoke.

“What made you decide to ride with me to the Rancho Seco?” she demanded sharply.

Harlan flashed a grin at her. He was riding a little in advance of her, and he had to turn in the saddle to see her face.

“I was headin’ that way, an’ wanted company. It sure gets lonesome ridin’ alone.”

She caught her breath at this answer, for it seemed that he had not revealed the real reason. And she had got her first good look at his face. It was lean and strong. His eyes were deep-set and rimmed by heavy lashes and brows, and there was a glow in them as he looked at her—a compelling fixity that held her. Her own drooped, and were lifted to his again in sheer curiosity, she thought at first.

It was only when she found herself, later, trying to catch his glance again that she realized they were magnetic eyes, and that the glow in them was of a subtle quality that could not be analyzed at a glance.

The girl was alert to detect a certain expression in his eyes—a gleam that would tell her what she half feared—that the motive that had brought him with her was like that which had caused Deveny to hold her captive. But she could detect no such expression in Harlan’s eyes, she could see a quizzical humor in his glances at times, or frank interest, and there were times when she saw a grim pity.

And the pity affected her strangely. It brought him close to her—figuratively; it convinced her that he was a man of warm sympathies in spite of the reputation he held in the Territory.

She had heard her father speak of him—always with a sort of awe in his voice; and tales of his reckless daring, his Satanic cleverness with a six-shooter, of his ruthlessness, had reached her ears from other sources. He had seemed, then, like some evil character of mythology, remote and far, and not likely to appear in the flesh in her section of the country.

It seemed impossible that she had fled to such a man for protection—and that he had protected her; and that she was now riding beside him—or slightly behind him—and that, to all appearances, he was quite as respectful toward her as other men. That, she surmised, was what made it all seem so strange.

Harlan did not seem disposed to talk; and he kept Purgatory slightly in the lead—except when the trail grew dim or disappeared altogether. Then he would pull the black horse up, look inquiringly at Barbara, and urge Purgatory after her when she took the lead.

But there were many things that Barbara wanted to inquire about; and it was when they were crossing a big level between some rimming hills, where the trail was broad, that she urged her pony beside the black.

“Won’t you tell me about father—how he died?” she asked.

He looked sharply at her, saw that she was now quite composed, and drawing Purgatory to a walk, began to relate to her the incident of the fight at Sentinel Rock. His story was brief—brutally brief, she might have thought, had she not been watching his face during the telling, noting the rage that flamed in his eyes when he spoke of Dolver and Laskar and the mysterious “Chief.”

It was plain to the girl that he had sympathized with her father; and it was quite as plain that he now sympathized with her. And thus she mentally recorded another point in his favor:

He might be a gunman, a ruthless killer, an outlaw of such evil reputation that men mentioned his name with awe in their voices—but she knew, now, that he had a keen sense of justice, and that the murder of her father had aroused the retributive instinct in him.

Also, she was convinced that compared to Deveny, Rogers, and Lawson, he was a gentleman. At least, so far he had not looked at her as those men had looked at her. He had been with her now for several hours, in a lonely country where there was no law except his own desires, and he had been as gravely courteous and considerate as it was possible for any man to be.

When he finished his story, having neglected to mention the paper he had removed from one of the cylinders of Morgan’s pistol—upon which was written instructions regarding the location of the gold Morgan had secreted—Barbara rode for a long time in silence, her head bowed, her eyes moist.

At last she looked up. Harlan’s gaze was straight ahead; he was watching the trail, where it vanished over the crest of a high ridge, and he did not seem to be aware of Barbara’s presence.

“And father told you to tell me—wanted you to bring the news to me?”

Harlan nodded.

“Then,” she went on “your obligation—if you were under any—seems to have been completed. You need not have come out of your way.”

“I was headed this way.”

“To the Rancho Seco?” she questioned, astonished.

Again he nodded. But this time there was a slight smile on his lips.

Her own straightened, and her eyes glowed with a sudden suspicion.

“That’s odd,” she said; “very odd.”

“What is?”

“That you should be on your way to the Rancho Seco—and that you should encounter father—that you should happen to reach Sentinel Rock about the time he was murdered.”

He looked straight at her, noting the suspicion in her eyes. His low laugh had a hint of irony in it.

“I’ve heard of such things,” he said.

“What?”

“About guys happenin’ to run plumb into a murder when they was innocent of it—an’ of them bein’ accused of the murder.”

It was the mocking light in his eyes that angered her, she believed—and the knowledge that he had been aware of her suspicion before it had become half formed in her mind.

“I’m not accusing you!” she declared.

“You said it was odd that I’d be headed this way—after I’d told you all there was to tell.”

“It is!” she maintained.

“Well,” he conceded; “mebbe it’s odd. But I’m still headin’ for the Rancho Seco. Mebbe I forgot to tell you that your father said I was to go—that he made me promise to go.”

He had not mentioned that before; and the girl glanced sharply at him. He met the glance with a slow grin which had in it a quality of that subtleness she had noticed in him before. A shiver of trepidation ran over her. But she sat rigid in the saddle, determined she would not be afraid of him. For the exchange of talk between them, and his considerate manner—everything about him—had convinced her that he was much like other men—men who respect women.

“There is no evidence that father made you promise to go to the Rancho Seco.”

“There wasn’t no evidence that I made any promise to keep that man Deveny from herd-ridin’ you,” he said shortly, with a grin. “I’m sure goin’ to the Rancho Seco.”

“Suppose I should not wish it—what then?”

“I’d keep right on headin’ for there—keepin’ my promise.”

“Do you always keep your promises?” she asked, mockery in her voice.

“When I make ’em. Usually, I don’t do any promisin’. But when I do—that promise is goin’ to be kept. If you ain’t likin’ my company, ma’am, why, I reckon there’s a heap of trail ahead. An’ I ain’t afraid of gettin’ lost.”

“Isn’t that remarkable!” she jeered.

He looked at her with sober eyes. “If we’re figurin’ on hittin’ the Rancho Seco before night we’ll have to quit our gassin’ an’ do some travelin’,” he advised. “Accordin’ to the figures we’ve got about forty miles to ride, altogether. We’ve come about fifteen—an’,” he looked at a silver watch which he drew from a pocket, “it’s pretty near two now.”

Without further words—for it seemed useless to argue the point upon which he was so obviously determined—Barbara urged Billy on, taking the lead.

For more than an hour she maintained the lead, riding a short distance in advance, and seemingly paying no attention to Harlan. Yet she noted that he kept about the same distance from her always—though she never permitted him to observe that she watched him, for her backward glances were taken out of the corners of her eyes, when she pretended to be looking at the country on one side or the other.

Harlan, however, noted the glances. And his lips curved into a faint grin as he rode. Once when he had dropped behind a little farther than usual, he leaned over and whispered into Purgatory’s ear:

“She’s sure ignorin’ us, ain’t she, you black son-of-a-gun! She ain’t looked back here more’n three times in the last five minutes!”

And yet Harlan’s jocular mood did not endure long. During those intervals in which Barbara kept her gaze straight ahead on the trail, Harlan regarded her with a grave intentness that betrayed the soberness of his thoughts.

In all his days he had seen no woman like her; and when she had come toward him in Lamo, with Higgins close behind her, he had been so astonished that he had momentarily forgotten Deveny and all the rest of them.

Women of the kind he had met had never affected him as Barbara had affected him. He had still a mental picture of her as she had come toward him, with her hair flying in a golden-brown mass over her shoulders; her wide, fear-lighted eyes seeking his with an expression of appeal so eloquent that it had sent a queer, thrilling, protective sensation over him.

And as she rode ahead of him it was the picture she had made then that he saw; and the emotions that assailed him were the identical emotions that had beset him when for a brief instant, in Lamo, he had held her in his arms, with her head resting on his shoulder.

That, he felt, had been the real Barbara Morgan. Her manner now—the constrained and distant pose she had adopted, her suspicions, her indignation—all those were outward manifestations of the reaction that had seized her. The real Barbara Morgan was she who had run to him for protection and she would always be to him as she had appeared then—a soft, yielding, trembling girl who, at a glance had trusted him enough to run straight into his arms.

CHAPTER IX

AN UNWELCOME GUEST

It was late afternoon when Barbara and Harlan—the girl still riding a little in advance of the man—rode their horses out of a stretch of broken country featured by low, barren hills and ragged draws, and came to the edge of a vast level of sage and mesquite that stretched southward an interminable distance.

The sun was low—a flaming red disk that swam in a sea of ever-changing color between the towering peaks of two mighty mountains miles westward—and the sky above the big level upon which Barbara and Harlan rode was a pale amethyst set in the dull gray frame of the dusk that was rising from the southern and eastern horizons.

Eastward the gray was pierced by the burning, flaming prismatic streaks that stretched straight from the cleft in the mountains where the sun was sinking—the sun seemed to be sending floods of new color into the streaks as he went, deepening those that remained; tinging it all with harmonious tones—rose and pearl and violet and saffron blending them with a giant, magic brush—recreating them, making the whole background of amethyst sky glow like a huge jewel touched by the myriad colors of a mighty rainbow.

The trail taken by Barbara Morgan ran now, in a southeasterly direction, and it seemed to Harlan that they were riding straight into the folds of a curtain of gauze. For a haze was rising into the effulgent expanse of color, and the sun’s rays, striking it, wrought their magic upon it.

Harlan, accustomed to sunsets—with a matter-of-fact attitude toward all of nature’s phenomena—caught himself admiring this one. So intent was he that he looked around with a start when Purgatory halted, to find that Barbara had drawn Billy down and was sitting in the saddle close to him, watching him, her eyes luminous with an emotion that thrilled Harlan strangely.

“This is the most beautiful place in the world,” she declared in a voice that seemed to quaver with awe.

“It’s sure a beauty,” agreed Harlan. “I’ve been in a heap of places where they had sunsets, but dump ’em all together an’ they wouldn’t make an edge on this display. She’s sure a hummer!”

The girl’s eyes seemed to leap at his praise.

“I never want to leave this place,” she said. “There is nothing like it. Those two mountains that you see far out into the west—where the sun is going down—are about forty miles distant. If you will notice, you can see that there are other mountains—much smaller—connected with them. They are two small ranges, and they melt into the plains there—and there.”

She pointed to the south and to the north, where the two ranges, seemingly extending straight westward, merged into the edge of the big level where Barbara and Harlan sat on their horses.

The two ranges were perhaps a dozen miles apart, separated by a low level valley through which ran a narrow river, its surface glowing like burnished gold in the rays of the sinking sun.

Gazing westward—straight into the glow—Harlan noted the virgin wildness of the immense valley. It lay, serene, slumberous; its salient features—ridges, low hills, rocky promontories and wooded slopes—touched by the rose tints that descended upon them; while in the depressions reigned purple shadows, soft-toned, blending perfectly with the brighter colors.

With the sunset glow upon it; with the bastioned hills—barren at their peaks, ridged and seamed—looming clear and definite above the vast expanse of green, the colossal valley stretched, with no movement in it or above it—in a vacuum-like stillness that might have reigned over the world on the dawn of creation’s first morning.

Harlan looked covertly at Barbara. The girl’s face was pale, and her eyes were glowing with a light that made him draw a long breath of sympathy and understanding. But it had been many years since he had felt the thrill of awe that she was experiencing at this minute.

He knew that presently the spell would pass, and that material things would exact their due. And the resulting contrast between the beauty of the picture upon which she was gazing, and the solemn realization of loss that memory would bring, instantly, would almost crush her.

Therefore he spoke seriously when he caught her looking at him.

“There’s sunsets an’ sunsets,” he said. “They tell me that they’re a heap common in some parts of the world. Wyoming, now—Wyoming prides herself on sunsets. An’ I’ve heard they have ’em in Italy, an’ France—an’ some more of them foreign places—where guys go to look at ’em. But it’s always seemed to me that there ain’t a heap of sense in gettin’ fussed up over a sunset. The sun has got his work to do; an’ he does it without any fussin’. An’ they tell me that it’s the same sun that sets in all them places I’ve been tellin’ you about.

“Well, it’s always been my idee that the sun ain’t got no compliments due him—he’ll set mighty beautiful—sometimes; an’ folks will get awed an’ thrilly over him. But the next day—if a man happens to be ridin’ in the desert, where there ain’t any water, he’ll cuss the sun pretty thorough—forgettin’ the nice things he said about it once.”

Barbara scowled at him.

“You haven’t a bit of poetry in your soul!” she charged. “I’m sorry we stopped to look at the valley or the sun—or anything. You don’t—you can’t appreciate the beautiful!”

He was silent as she urged Billy onward. And as they fled southwestward, with Purgatory far behind, Harlan swept his hat from his head and bowed toward the mighty valley, saying lowly:

“You’re sure a hummer—an’ no mistake. But if a man had any poetry in his soul—why——”

He rode on, gulping his delight over having accomplished what he had intended to accomplish.

“She’ll be givin’ it to me pretty regular; an’ she won’t have time for no solemn thoughts. They’ll come later, though, when she gets to the Rancho Seco.”

It was the lowing of cattle that at last brought to Harlan the conviction that they were near the Rancho Seco—that and the sight of the roofs of some buildings that presently came into view.

But they had been riding for half an hour before they came upon the cattle and buildings, and the flaming colors had faded into somber gray tones. The filmy dusk that precedes darkness was beginning to settle over the land; and into the atmosphere had come that solemn hush with which the wide, open places greet the night.

Barbara had no further word to say to Harlan until they reached a group of buildings that were scattered on a big level near a river. They had passed a long stretch of wire fence, which Harlan suspected, enclosed a section of land reserved for a pasture; and the girl brought her pony to a halt in front of an adobe building near a high rail fence.

“This is the Rancho Seco,” she said shortly. “This is the stable. Over there is the ranchhouse. Evidently the men are all away somewhere.”

She got off the pony, removed the saddle and bridle, carried them into the stable, came out again, and opened a gate in the fence, through which she sent “Billy.” Then she closed the gate and turned to Harlan, who had dismounted and was standing at Purgatory’s head.

“I thank you for what you have done for me,” she said, coldly. “And now, I should like to know just what you purpose to do—and why you have come.”

Harlan’s eyes narrowed as he returned her gaze. He remembered Lane Morgan’s words: “John Haydon is dead stuck on Barbara;” and he had wondered ever since the meeting in Lamo if Barbara returned Haydon’s affection, or if she trusted Haydon enough to confide in him.

Barbara’s attitude toward Haydon would affect Harlan’s attitude toward the girl. For if she loved Haydon, or trusted him enough to confide in him—or even to communicate with him concerning ordinary details, Harlan could not apprise her of the significance of his presence at the Rancho Seco.

For Haydon was unknown to Harlan and Harlan was not inclined to accept Morgan’s praise of him as conclusive evidence of the man’s worthiness. Besides, Morgan had qualified his instructions with: “Take a look at John Haydon, an’ if you think he’s on the level—an’ you want to drift on—turn things over to him.”

Harlan did not want to “drift on.” Into his heart since his meeting in Lamo with Barbara—and during the ride to the Rancho Seco—had grown a decided reluctance toward “drifting.” And not even the girl’s scorn could have forced him to leave her at the ranch, unprotected.

But he could not tell her why he could not go. Despite her protests he must remain—at least until he was able to determine the character of John Haydon.

A gleam of faint mockery came into his eyes as he looked at Barbara.

“I’m keepin’ my promise to your dad—I’m stayin’ at the Rancho Seco because he told me to stay. He wanted me to sort of look out that nothin’ happened to you. I reckon we’ll get along.”

The girl caught her breath sharply. In the growing darkness Harlan’s smile seemed to hold an evil significance; it seemed to express a thought that took into consideration the loneliness of the surroundings, the fact that she was alone, and that she was helpless. More—it seemed to be a presumptuous smile, insinuating, full of dire promise.

For Harlan was an outlaw—she could not forget that! He bore a reputation for evil that had made him feared wherever men congregated; and as she watched him it seemed to her that his face betrayed signs of his ruthlessness, his recklessness, and his readiness for violence of every kind.

He might not have killed her father—Rogers and Lawson had acquitted him of that. But he might be lying about the promise to her father merely for the purpose of providing an excuse to come to the Rancho Seco. It seemed to her that if her father had really exacted a promise from him he would have written to her, or sent her some token to prove the genuineness of it. There was no visible evidence of Harlan’s truthfulness.

“Do you mean to say you are going to stay here—indefinitely?” she demanded, her voice a little hoarse from the fright that was stealing over her.

He smiled at her. “You’ve hit it about right, ma’am.”

“I don’t want you to stay here!” she declared, angrily.

“I’m stayin’, ma’am.” His smile faded, and his eyes became serious—earnest.

“Later on—when things shape themselves up—I’ll tell you why I’m stayin’. But just now——”

She shrank from him, incredulous, a growing fear plain in her eyes. And before he could finish what he intended to say she had wheeled, and was running toward the ranchhouse.

He watched until she vanished through an open doorway; he heard the door slam, and caught the sound of bars being hurriedly dropped into place. And after that he stood for a time watching the house. No light came from within, and no other sound.

He frowned slightly, drawing a mental picture of the girl inside, yielding to the terror that had seized her. Then after a while he walked down along the corral fence until he came to another building—a bunkhouse. And for a long time he stood in the doorway of the building, watching the ranchhouse, afflicted with grim sympathy.

“It ain’t so damn’ cheerful, at that,” he mused. “I reckon she thinks she’s landed into trouble with both feet—with her dad cashin’ in like he did, an’ Deveny after her. It sure must be pretty hard to consider all them things. An’ on top of that I mosey along, with a reputation as a no-good son-of-a-gun, an’ scare the wits out of her with my homely mug. An’ I can’t tell her why she hadn’t ought to be scared. I call that mighty mean.”

CHAPTER X

ON GUARD

The man whose soul held no love of the poetic sat for two or three hours on the threshold of the bunkhouse door, his gaze on the ranchhouse. He was considering his “reputation,” and he had reached the conclusion that Barbara Morgan had reason to fear him—if rumor’s tongues had related to her all of the crimes that had been attributed to him. And he knew she must have heard a great many tales about him, for rumor is a tireless worker.

And for the first time in his life Harlan regretted that he had permitted rumor to weave her fabric of lies. For not one of the stories that luridly portrayed him in the rôle of a ruthless killer and outlaw was true.

It was easy enough for him to understand how he had gained that reputation. He grinned mirthlessly now, as he mentally reviewed a past which had been rather like the record of a professional man-killer. And yet, reviewing his past—from the day about five years ago, when he had shot a Taos bully who had drawn a gun on him with murderous intent, until today, when he had sent Laskar to his death—he could not remember one shooting affray for which he could be blamed. As a matter of fact, he had—by the courts in some instances, and by witnesses in others, where there were no courts—been held blameless.

There had been men who had seen Harlan draw his weapons with deadly intent—men who insisted that the man’s purpose was plain, to goad an enemy to draw a weapon, permitting him partially to draw it, and then to depend upon his superior swiftness and unerring aim. And this theory of Harlan’s character had gone abroad.

And because the theory had been accepted, Harlan’s name became associated with certain crimes which are inseparable from the type of character which the popular imagination had given him. Strangers—criminals—in certain towns in the Territory and out of it must have heard with considerable satisfaction that their depredations had been charged to Harlan. Only once had Harlan been able to refute the charge of rumor. That was when, having passed a night in the company of Dave Hallowell, the marshal of Pardo, word was brought by a stage-driver that “Drag” Harlan had killed a man in Dry Bottom—a town two hundred miles north—and that Harlan had escaped, though a posse had been on his trail.

Even when the driver was confronted by Harlan in the flesh he was doubtful, surrendering grudgingly, as though half convinced that Harlan had been able to transport himself over the distance from Dry Bottom to Pardo by some magic not mentioned.

So it had gone. But the terrible record of evil deeds attributed to Harlan had not affected him greatly. In the beginning—when he had killed the Taos bully—he had been reluctant to take life; and he had avoided, as much as possible, company in which he would be forced to kill to protect himself.

And through it all he had been able to maintain his poise, his self-control. The reputation he had achieved would have ruined some men—would have filled them with an ambition to fulfil the specifications of the mythical terror men thought him. There was a danger there; Harlan had felt it. There was a certain satisfaction in being pointed out as a man with whom other men dared not trifle; respect of a fearsome equality was granted him—he had seen it in the eyes of men, as he had seen an awed adulation in the eyes of women.

He had felt them all—all the emotions that a real desperado could feel. He had experienced the impulse to swagger, to pose—really to live the part that his ill-fame had given him.

But he had resisted those impulses; and the glow in his eyes when in the presence of men who feared him was not the passion to kill, but a humorous contempt of all men who abased themselves before him.

On the night he had been with Dave Hallowell, the marshal of Pardo, he had listened with steady interest to a story told him by the latter. It concerned the Lamo region and the great basin at which he and Barbara Morgan had been looking when the girl had accused him of a lack of poetic feeling.

“I’ve heard reports about Sunset Valley,” Hallowell had said, squinting his eyes at Harlan. “I’ve met Sheriff Gage two or three times, an’ he’s had somethin’ to say about it. Accordin’ to Gage, everything ain’t on the surface over there; there’s somethin’ behind all that robbin’ an’ stealin’ that’s goin’ on. There’s somethin’ big, but it’s hid—an’ no man ain’t ever been able to find out what it is. But it’s somethin’.

“In the first place, Deveny’s gang ain’t never been heard of as pullin’ off anything anywheres else but in Sunset Valley. As for that, there’s plenty of room in the valley for them without gettin’ out of it. But it seems they’d get out once in a while. They don’t—they stay right in the valley, or close around it. Seems to me they’ve got a grudge ag’in’ them Sunset Valley ranchers, an’ are workin’ it off.

“Why? That question has got Gage guessin’. It’s got everybody guessin’. Stock is bein’ run off in big bunches; men is bein’ murdered without no cause; no man is able to get any money in or out of the valley—an’ they’re doin’ other things that is makin’ the cattlemen feel nervous an’ flighty.

“They’ve scared one man out—a Pole named Launski—from the far end. He pulled stakes an’ hit the breeze runnin’ sellin’ out for a song to a guy named Haydon. I seen Launski when he clumb on the Lamo stage, headin’ this way, an’ he sure was a heap relieved to get out with a whole skin.”

Hallowell talked long, and the mystery that seemed to surround Sunset Valley appealed to Harlan’s imagination. Yet he did not reveal his interest to Hallowell until the latter mentioned Barbara Morgan. Then his eyes glowed, and he leaned closer to the marshal.

And when Hallowell remarked that Lane Morgan, of the Rancho Seco had declared he would give half his ranch to a trustworthy man who could be depended upon to “work his guns” in the interest of the Morgan family, the slow tensing of Harlan’s muscles might have betrayed the man’s emotions—for Hallowell grinned faintly.

Hallowell had said more. But he did not say that word had come to him from Sheriff Gage—an appeal, rather—to the effect that Morgan had sent to him for such a man, and that Gage had transmitted the appeal to Hallowell. Hallowell thought he knew Harlan, and he was convinced that if he told Harlan flatly that Morgan wanted to employ him for that definite purpose, Harlan would refuse.

And so Hallowell had gone about his work obliquely. He knew Harlan more intimately than he knew any other man in the country; and he was aware that the chivalric impulse was stronger in Harlan than in any man he knew.

And he was aware, too, that Harlan was scrupulously honest and square, despite the evil structure which had been built around him by rumor. He had watched Harlan for years, and knew him for exactly what he was—an imaginative, reckless, impulsive spirit who faced danger with the steady, unwavering eye of complete unconcern.

As Hallowell had talked of the Rancho Seco he had seen Harlan’s eyes gleam; seen his lips curve with a faint smile in which there was a hint of waywardness. And so Hallowell knew he had scattered his words on fertile mental soil.

And yet Harlan would not have taken the trail that led to the Rancho Seco had not the killing of his friend, Davey Langan, followed closely upon the story related to him by the marshal.

Harlan had ridden eastward, to Lazette—a matter of two hundred miles—trailing a herd of cattle from the T Down—the ranch where he and Langan were employed.

When he returned he heard the story of the killing of his friend by Dolver and another man, not identified, but who rode a horse branded with the L Bar M—which was the Rancho Seco brand.

It was Hallowell who broke the news of the murder to Harlan, together with the story of his pursuit of Dolver and the other man, and of his failure to capture them.

There was no thought of romance in Harlan’s mind when he mounted Purgatory to take up Dolver’s trail; and when he came upon Dolver at Sentinel Rock—and later, until he had talked with Lane Morgan—he had no thought of offering himself to Morgan, to become that trustworthy man who would “work his guns” for the Rancho Seco owner.

But after he had questioned Laskar—and had felt that Laskar was not the accomplice of Dolver in the murder of Langan—he had determined to go to the ranch, and had told Morgan of his determination.

Now, sitting on the threshold of the Rancho Seco bunkhouse, he realized that his talk with Morgan had brought him here in a different rôle than he had anticipated.

From where he sat he had a good view of all the buildings—low, flat-roofed adobe structures, scattered on the big level with no regard for system, apparently—erected as the needs of a growing ranch required. Yet all were well kept and substantial, indicating that Lane Morgan had been a man who believed in neatness and permanency.

The ranchhouse was the largest of the buildings. It was two stories high on the side fronting the slope that led to the river, and another section—in what appeared to be the rear, facing the bunkhouse, also had a second story—a narrow, boxlike, frowning section which had the appearance of a blockhouse on the parapet wall of a fort.

And that, Harlan divined, was just what it had been built for—for defensive purposes. For the entire structure bore the appearance of age, and the style of its architecture was an imitation of the Spanish type. It was evident that Lane Morgan had considered the warlike instincts of wandering bands of Apache Indians when he had built his house.

The walls connecting the fortlike section in the rear with the two-story front were about ten feet in height, with few windows; and the entire structure was built in a huge square, with an inner court, or patio, reached by an entrance that penetrated the lower center of the two-story section in front.

Harlan’s interest centered heavily upon the ranchhouse, for it was there that Barbara Morgan had hidden herself, fearing him.

She had entered a door that opened in the wall directly beneath the fortlike second story, and it was upon this door that Harlan’s gaze was fixed. He smiled wryly, for sight of the door brought Barbara into his thoughts—though he was not sure she had been out of them since the first instant of his meeting with her in Lamo.

“They’ve been tellin’ her them damn stories about me bein’ a hell-raiser—an’ she believes ’em,” he mused. And then his smile faded. “An she ain’t none reassured by my mug.”

But it was upon the incident of his meeting with Barbara, and the odd coincidence of his coming upon her father at Sentinel Rock, that his thoughts dwelt longest.

It was odd—that meeting at Sentinel Rock. And yet not so odd, either, considering everything.

For he had been coming to the Rancho Seco. Before he had reached Sentinel Rock he had been determined to begin his campaign against the outlaws at the Rancho Seco. It was his plan to ask Morgan for a job, and to spend as much of his time as possible in getting information about Deveny and his men, in the hope of learning the identity of the man who had assisted in the murder of Langan.

What was odd about the incident was that Morgan should attempt to cross to Pardo to have his gold assayed at just about the time Harlan had decided to begin his trip to the Rancho Seco.

Harlan smiled as his gaze rested on the ranchhouse. He was glad he had met Lane Morgan; he was glad he had headed straight for Lamo after leaving Morgan. For by going straight to Lamo he had been able to balk Deveny’s evil intentions toward the girl who, in the house now, was so terribly afraid of him.

He had told Morgan why he was headed toward the Rancho Seco section, but he had communicated to Morgan that information only because he had wanted to cheer the man in his last moments. That was what had made Morgan’s face light up as his life had ebbed away. And Harlan’s eyes glowed now with the recollection.

“The damned cuss—how he did brighten up!” he mused. “He sure was a heap tickled to know that the deck wasn’t all filled with dirty deuces.”

And then Harlan’s thoughts went again to Lamo, and to the picture Barbara had made running toward him. It seemed to him that he could still feel her in his arms, and a great regret that she distrusted him assailed him.

He had sat for a long time on the threshold of the bunkhouse door, and after a time he noted that the moon was swimming high, almost overhead. He got up, unhurriedly, and again walked to the stable door, looking in at Purgatory. For Harlan did not intend to sleep tonight; he had resolved, since the Rancho Seco seemed to be deserted except for his and Barbara’s presence, to guard the ranchhouse.

For he knew that the passions of Deveny for the girl were thoroughly aroused. He had seen in Deveny’s eyes there in Lamo a flame—when Deveny looked at Barbara—that told him more about the man’s passions than Deveny himself suspected. He grinned coldly as he leaned easily against the stable door; for men of the Deveny type always aroused him—their personality had always seemed to strike discord into his soul; had always fanned into flame the smoldering hatred he had of such men; had always brought into his heart those savage impulses which he had sometimes felt when he was on the verge of yielding to the urge to become what men had thought him—and what they still thought him—a conscienceless killer.

His smile now was bitter with the hatred that was in his heart for Deveny—for Deveny had cast longing, lustful eyes upon Barbara Morgan—and the smile grew into a sneer as he drew out paper and tobacco and began to roll a cigarette.

But as he rolled the cigarette his fingers stiffened; the paper and the tobacco in it dropped into the dust at his feet; and he stiffened, his lips straightening, his eyes flaming with rage, his muscles tensing.

For a horseman had appeared from out of the moonlit haze beyond the river. Rigid in the doorway—standing back a little so that he might not be seen—Harlan watched the man.

The latter brought his horse to a halt when he reached the far corner of the ranchhouse, dismounted, and stole stealthily along the wall of the building.

Harlan was not more than a hundred feet distant, and the glare of the moonlight shining full on the man as he paused before the door into which Barbara Morgan had gone, revealed him plainly to Harlan.

The man was Meeder Lawson. Harlan’s lips wreathed into a grin of cold contempt. He stepped quickly to Purgatory, drew his rifle from its saddle sheath and returned to the doorway. And there, standing in the shadows, he watched Lawson as the latter tried the door and, failing to open it, left it and crept along the wall of the building, going toward a window.

The window also was fastened, it seemed, for Lawson stole away from it after a time and continued along the wall of the house until he reached the southeast corner. Around that, after a fleeting glance about him, Lawson vanished.

Still grinning—though there was now a quality in the grin that might have warned Lawson, had he seen it—Harlan stepped down from the doorway, slipped into the shadow of the corral fence, and made his way toward the corner where Lawson had disappeared.

CHAPTER XI

THE INTRUDER

After closing the door through which she had entered, Barbara Morgan slipped the fastenings into place and stood, an ear pressed against the door, listening for sounds that would tell her Harlan had followed her. But beyond the door all was silence.

Breathing fast, yielding to the panic of fear that had seized her, over the odd light she had seen in Harlan’s eyes—a gleam, that to her, seemed to have been a reflection of some evil passion in the man’s heart—she ran through the dark room she had entered, opened a door that led to the patio, and peered fearfully outward, as though she half expected to see Harlan there.

But the court was deserted, apparently, though there were somber shadows ranging the enclosing walls that would afford concealment for Harlan, had he succeeded in gaining entrance. As she stepped out of the doorway she peered intently around.

Then, further frightened by the brooding silence that seemed to envelop the place, and tortured by tragic thoughts in which her father occupied a prominent position—almost crazed by the memory of what had happened during the preceding twenty-four hours—she fled across the patio swiftly, her terror growing with each step.

She knew the house thoroughly; she could have found her way in complete darkness; and when she reached the opposite side of the court she almost threw herself at a door which, she knew, opened into the big room in which she and her father had usually passed their leisure.

Entering, she closed the door, and barred it. Then, feeling more secure, she stood for an instant in the center of the room, gazing about, afflicted with an appalling sense of loss, of loneliness, and of helplessness.

For this was the first time she had entered the house since the news of her father’s death had reached her; and she missed him, feeling more keenly than ever the grief she had endured thus far with a certain stoic calm; yielding to the tears that had been very close for hours.

She did not light the kerosene lamp that stood on a big center table in the room. For there was light enough for her to see objects around her; and she went at last to an arm-chair which had been her father’s favorite, knelt beside it, and sobbed convulsively.

Later, yielding to a dull apathy which had stolen over her, she made her way upstairs, to her room—which was directly over the front entrance to the patio—and sank into a chair beside one of the windows.

She had locked her door after entering; and for the first time since arriving at the Rancho Seco she felt comparatively safe.

Her thoughts were incoherent—a queer jumble of mental impulses which seemed to lead her always back to the harrowing realization that she had lost her father. That was the gigantic axis around which her whole mental structure revolved. It was staggering, stupefying, and her brain reeled under it.

Other thoughts came, flickered like feeble lights, and went out—thoughts of what had happened to her at Lamo; a dull wonder over Meeder Lawson’s presence in town when he should have been with the men on the range; speculation as to the whereabouts of the men—why none of them had remained at the ranchhouse; and a sort of dumb, vague wonder over what her future would be.

She thought, too, of John Haydon of the Star ranch—the big, smiling, serene-eyed man who seemed to bring a breath of romance with him each time he visited the Rancho Seco. Haydon would help her, she knew, and she would go to him in the morning.

Her father had trusted Haydon, and she would trust him. Haydon was the one man in the section who seemed to have no fear of Deveny and his men—many times he had told her that most of the stories told of Deveny’s crimes were untrue—that he had not committed all those that were attributed to him.

Not that Haydon condoned those offenses upon which Deveny stood convicted by circumstantial evidence. Nor had Haydon ever sought to defend Deveny. On the other hand, Haydon’s condemnation of the outlaw and his men had been vigorous—almost too vigorous for Haydon’s safety, she had heard her father say.

It was when her thoughts dwelt upon Harlan that she was most puzzled—and impressed. For though she was acquainted with the man’s reputation—knowing him to be an outlaw of the reckless, dare-devil type—she felt the force of him, the compelling originality of him—as he differed from the outlaw of popular conception—his odd personality, which seemed to be a mingling of the elements of character embracing both good and evil.

For though an outlaw himself, he had protected her from outlaws. And she had seen in his eyes certain expressions that told her that he felt impulses of sympathy and of tenderness. And his words to Deveny and others had seemed to hint of a fairly high honorableness.

And though she had seen in his eyes a cold gleam that was convincing evidence of the presence of those ruthless passions which had made him an enemy of the law, she had also detected expressions in his eyes that told plainly of genial humor, of gentleness, and of consideration for other humans.

But whatever she had seen in him, she felt his force—the terrible power of him when aroused. It was in the atmosphere that surrounded him; it was in the steady gleam of his eyes, in the poise of his head, and in the thrust of his jaw, all around him. She feared him, yet he fascinated her—compelled her—seemed to insist that she consider him in her scheme of life.

In fact, he had made it plain to her that he intended to be considered. “I’m stayin’ here,” he had told her in his slow, deliberate way.

And that seemed to end it—she knew he would stay; that he was determined, and that nothing short of force would dissuade him. And what force could she bring against him? A man whose name, mentioned in the presence of other men, made their faces blanch.

Deep in her heart, though, lurked a conviction that Harlan had not told her everything that had happened at Sentinel Rock. She was afflicted with a suspicion that he was holding something back. She had seen that in his eyes, too, she thought. It seemed to her that her father might have told him to come to the Rancho Seco, and to stay there. And for that reason—because she suspected that Harlan had not told all he knew—she felt that she ought not order him away. If only he had not looked at her with that queer, insinuating smile!

She had sat at the window for, it seemed to her, many hours before she became aware that the moon had risen and was directly overhead, flooding the ground in the vicinity of the ranchhouse with a soft, silver radiance.

She got up with a start, remembering that she had left Harlan standing outside the door in the rear. She had almost forgotten that!

She went to a window that opened into the patio, and looked downward. Every nook and corner of the patio was visible now; the dark, somber shadows had been driven away, and in the silvery flood that poured down from above the enclosure was brilliant, clearly defined—and deserted.

And yet as the girl looked, a presentiment of evil assailed her, whitening her cheeks and widening her eyes. The quiet peace and tranquillity of the patio seemed to mock her; she felt that it held a sinister promise, a threat of dire things to come.

The feeling was so strong that it drove her back from the window to the center of the room, where she stood, holding her breath, her hands clasped in front of her, the fingers twining stiffly. It seemed to her that she was waiting—waiting for something to happen—something that threatened.

And when she heard a slight sound, seeming to arise from the room below her, she caught her breath with a gasp of horror.

But she did not move. She stood there, with no breath issuing from between her lips, for many minutes, it seemed—waiting, dreading, a cold paralysis stealing over her.

And then again it came—an odd sound—slow, creaking, seeming to come always nearer. It was not until she heard the sound directly outside her door that she realized that what she heard was a step on the stairs. And then, convinced that Harlan had gained entrance, she slipped noiselessly across the room to the front wall, where she took down a heavy pistol that hung from a wooden peg.

With the huge weapon in hand she returned to a point near the center of the room, and with bated breath and glowing, determined eyes, faced the door.

And when, after a time, she heard the door creak with a weight that seemed to be against it—after she saw it give; heard the lock break, and saw a man’s form darken the opening as the door was flung wide—she pressed the trigger of the weapon once—twice—three times—in rapid succession.

She heard the man curse, saw him catch at his chest, and tumble headlong toward her. And she fired again, thinking he was trying to grasp her.

She laughed hysterically when she saw him sink to the floor and stretch out with a queer inertness. Then, swaying, her brain reeling with the horror of the thing, she managed to get to the bed at the other side of the room. When she reached it she collapsed gently, a long, convulsive shudder running over her.

CHAPTER XII

BARBARA SEES A LIGHT

When Barbara regained consciousness it was with a gasp of horror over the realization of what had happened. She stiffened immediately, however, and lay, straining at the dread paralysis that had gripped her; for she saw Harlan standing at her side, looking down into her face, his own set in a grim smile.

She must have fainted again, for it seemed to her that a long period of time elapsed until she again became conscious of her surroundings. Harlan had moved off a little, though he was still watching her with the grimly humorous expression.

She sat up, staring wildly at him; then shrank back, getting as far away from him as she could.

“You!” she gasped, “You! Didn’t I——”

He interrupted her, drawling his words a little:

“The guy you shot was Lawson. You bored him a heap. I’ve toted him downstairs. He’s plenty dead. It was plumb good shootin’—for a woman.”

His words shocked her to action, and she got up and walked around the foot of the bed, from where she could see the spot where the intruder must have fallen after she had shot him. A dark stain showed on the floor where the man had lain, and the sight of it sent her a step backward, so that she struck the foot of the bed. She caught at the bed and grasped one of the posts, holding tightly to it while she looked Harlan over with dreading, incredulous eyes.

“It—it wasn’t you!” she demanded. “Are you sure?”

He smiled and said, slowly and consolingly: “I reckon if you’d shot me I’d be knowin’ it. Don’t take it so hard, ma’am. Why, if a man goes to breakin’ into a woman’s room that way he sure ain’t fit to go on livin’ in a world where there is a woman.”

“It was Lawson—you say? Meeder Lawson—the Rancho Seco foreman? I thought—why, I thought it was you!”

“I’m thankin’ you, ma’am,” he said, ironically. “But if you’ll just stick your head out of that window, you’ll see it was Lawson, right enough. He’s layin’ right below the window.”

She did as bidden, and she saw Lawson lying on the ground beneath the window, flat on his back, his face turned upward with the radiant moonlight shining full upon his wide-open, staring eyes.

Barbara glanced swiftly, and then drew back into the room, shuddering.

Harlan stood, silently regarding her, while she walked again to the bed and sat upon it, staring out into the flood of moonlight, her face ghastly, her hands hanging limply at her sides.

She had killed a man. And though there was justification for the deed, she could not fight down the shivering horror that had seized her, the overpowering and terrible knowledge that she had taken human life.

She sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, and Harlan said no word to her, standing motionless, his arms folded, one hand slowly caressing his chin, as he watched her.

After a time, drawing a long, shuddering breath, she looked up at him.

“How did you know—what made you come—here?” she asked.

“I wasn’t reckonin’ to sleep tonight—havin’ thoughts—about things,” he said. “I was puttin’ in a heap of my time settin’ in the doorway of the bunkhouse, wonderin’ what had made you so scared of me. While I was tryin’ to figure it out I saw Lawson comin’. There was somethin’ in his actions which didn’t jibe with my ideas of square dealin’, an’ so I kept lookin’ at him. An’ when I saw him prowlin’ around, tryin’ to open doors an’ windows, why, I just naturally trailed him. An’ I found the window he opened. I reckon that’s all.”

She got up, swaying a little, a wan smile on her face that reflected her astonishment and wonder over the way she had jumbled things. For this man—the man she had feared when she had left him standing outside the door some hours before—had been eager to protect her from the other, who had attacked her. He had been waiting, watching.

Moreover, there was in Harlan’s eyes as he stood in the room a considerate, deferential gleam that told her more than words could have conveyed to her—a something that convinced her that he was not the type of man she had thought him.

The knowledge filled her with a strange delight. There was relief in her eyes, and her voice was almost steady when she again spoke to him:

“Harlan,” she said, “did father really send you here? Did he make you promise to come?”

“I reckon he did, ma’am,” he said.

For an instant she looked fairly at him, intently searching his eyes for indications of untruthfulness. Then she drew a long breath of conviction.

“I believe you,” she said.

Harlan swept his hat from his head. He bowed, and there was an odd leap in his voice:

“That tickles me a heap, ma’am. I don’t know when I’ve heard anything that pleased me more.”

He backed away from her until he reached the doorway. And she saw his eyes—wide and eloquent—even in the subdued light of the doorway.

“I’d go to sleep now, ma’am, if I was you. You need it a heap. It’s been a long day for you—an’ things ain’t gone just right. I don’t reckon there’ll be anybody botherin’ you any more tonight.”

“And you?” she asked, “won’t you try to get some sleep, too?”

He laughed, telling her that he would “ketch a wink or two.” Then he turned and went down the stairs—she could hear him as he opened a lower door and went out.

Looking out of the window an instant later, she saw him taking Lawson’s body away. And still later, hearing a sound outside, she stole to the window again.

Below, seated on the threshold of the door that led into the room she had entered when she had crossed the patio, she saw Harlan. He was smoking a cigarette, leaning against the door jamb in an attitude of complete relaxation.

There was something in his manner that comforted her—a calm confidence, a slow ease of movement as he fingered his cigarette that indicated perfect tranquility—an atmosphere of peace that could not have surrounded him had he meditated any evil whatever.

She knew, now, that she had misjudged him. For he had made no attempt to take advantage of her loneliness and helplessness. And whatever his reputation—whatever the crimes he had committed against the laws—he had been a gentleman in his attitude toward her. That feature of his conduct dominated her thoughts as she stretched out on the bed; it was her last coherent thought as she went to sleep.

CHAPTER XIII

HARLAN TAKES CHARGE

Barbara could not have told why she had not acted upon her determination to ride westward to the Star ranch to acquaint John Haydon with the predicament into which the events of the past few hours had plunged her. She could not have explained why she permitted the first day—after Harlan’s coming—to pass without going to see Haydon, any more than she could have explained why she permitted many other days to pass in the same manner.

She was almost convinced, though, that it was because of the manner in which Harlan took charge of the ranch—the capable and business-like way he had of treating the men.

For the outfit came in late in the afternoon following the night which had marked the death of Lawson—the straw-boss explaining that he had received explicit orders from Lawson to “work” a grass level several miles down the river.

One other reason for Barbara’s failure to ride to the Star—a reason that she did not permit to dwell prominently in her thoughts—was resentment.

She had permitted the first day to pass without going to see Haydon. But when it had gone and another day dawned without Haydon coming to see her, she felt that he was deliberately absenting himself. For certainly he must have heard what had happened, and if he thought as much of her as he had led her to believe he would have come to her instantly.

Had Haydon seen the defiant gleam of her eyes when she gazed westward—in the direction of the Star—he might have realized that each day he stayed away from the Rancho Seco would make it that much more difficult for him to explain.

Barbara stayed indoors much of the time during the first days of Harlan’s control of the ranch, but from the windows she saw him—noted that the men obeyed him promptly and without question.

A sense of loss, of emptiness, still afflicted the girl, and yet through it all there ran a thrill of satisfaction, of assurance that the steady-eyed man who had saved her from Deveny, and who had treated her like a courtier of old on the night she had killed Lawson, seemed to have her welfare in mind, seemed—despite the reputation the people of the country had given him—to have constituted himself her guardian, without expectation of reward of the kind she had feared he sought.

Harlan’s method of assuming control of the Rancho Seco had been direct and simple. When the twenty-seven men of the outfit had straggled into the yard surrounding the big corral—the chuck-wagon, bearing the cook and his assistant, trailing a little behind, and followed by the horses of the remuda with the wrangler hurling vitriolic language in the rear—Harlan was standing beside Purgatory near the corral fence in front of one of the bunkhouses.

He had paid—apparently—no attention to the men as they dismounted, unsaddled, and turned their horses into the corral, and he did not even look at the belligerent-eyed cook whose sardonic glance roved over him.

But the men of the outfit watched him out of the corners of their eyes; as they passed him to go to the bunkhouses, they shot inquiring, speculating glances at one another, full of curiosity, not unmixed with astonishment over his continued silence.

It was when, drawn by the wonder that consumed them, they gathered in a group near the door of one of the bunkhouses, that Harlan moved toward them.

For he had noted that they had become grouped, and that into the atmosphere had come a tension.

Harlan’s actions had been governed by design. His continued silence had been strategy of a subtle order. It had attracted the attention of the men, it had intrigued their interest.

If he had spoken to them while they had been moving about on their different errands, telling them that henceforth he was to manage the Rancho Seco, they would have given him scant attention. Also, he would not have been able to study their faces as he had studied them while they had been watching him, and he would not have gained the knowledge of their characters that he now possessed.

Besides, a humorous malice possessed Harlan—he wanted to view them collectively when he gave them his news, to note the various ways in which they would receive it.

Absolute silence greeted Harlan’s forward movement. He could hear the labored breathing of some of the men—men of violent temper who sensed trouble—and his grin grew broad as he halted within a dozen feet of the group.

“Boys,” he said, slowly, “you’ve got a new boss. It’s me. A day or so ago, crossin’ from Pardo, I run into a ruckus at Sentinel Rock. Lane Morgan was the center of the ruckus—an’ he got perforated—plenty. But before he cashed in he got a gleam of downright sense an’ told me he’d been lookin’ for me, to make me manager of the Rancho Seco.

“I’m reckonin’ to be manager—beginnin’ now. If there’s any of you men that ain’t admirin’ to do the jumpin’ when I yap orders to you, you’re doin’ your gassin’ right now. Them that’s pinin’ to work under me is sure of a square deal, beginnin’ now, and continuin’ henceforth. I reckon that’s all.”

Into Harlan’s eyes as he talked had come that vacuous light that had been in them when he had faced Deveny’s men in Lamo—the light that was always in his eyes whenever he faced more than one man, with trouble imminent.

He saw the face of every man in the group—while seeming not to be looking at any of them. He noted the various shades of expression that came into their faces as they digested his words, he saw how some of them watched him with sober interest and how others permitted themselves a sneer of incredulity or dislike.

He noted that a tall, slender, swarthy man on the extreme left of the group watched him with a malevolent gaze, his eyes flaming hate; he saw a black-haired, hook-nosed fellow near the center of the group watching him with a grin of cold contempt.

It seemed to Harlan that a fair proportion of the men were willing to acknowledge his authority—for they were frankly studying him, ready to greet him as their employer. Many others, however, were as frankly hostile.

After Harlan ceased speaking there came a short silence, during which many of the men looked at one another inquiringly.

It was a moment during which, had a leader appeared to take the initiative for those who intended to dissent from Harlan’s rule, the outfit might have been divided.

Evidently the tall, swarthy man divined that the time to dissent had come, for he cleared his throat, and grinned felinely.

Before he could speak, however, a short man with keen eyes that, since the instant they had rested upon Harlan, had been glowing with something that might have been defined as mingled astonishment and delight thinly concealed by a veneer of humor—said distinctly:

“You crossed over from Pardo—you say?”

Harlan nodded, and a pin-point of recognition glowed in his eyes as he looked at the man.

The other laughed, lowly. “Seems I know you,” he said. “You’re ‘Drag’ Harlan!”

A tremor ran through the group. There was a concerted stiffening of bodies, a general sigh from lungs in process of deflation. And then the group stood silent, every man watching Harlan with that intent curiosity that comes with one’s first glimpse of a noted character, introduced without expectation.

Harlan noted that a change had come over the men. Those whose faces had betrayed their inclination to accept his authority had taken—without exception—a glum, disappointed expression. On the other hand, those who had formerly betrayed hostility, were now grinning with satisfaction.

A tremor of malicious amusement, expressed visibly by a flicker of his eyelids, was Harlan’s only emotion over the change that had come in the men of the group. He could now have selected those of the men who—as Lane Morgan had said—could not be trusted, and he could have pointed out those who had been loyal to Morgan, and who would be loyal to Barbara and himself.

Among the former were the tall, swarthy man on the extreme left, and the hook-nosed fellow near the center. There were perhaps ten of the latter, and it was plain to Harlan that the short man who had spoken was their leader.

“‘Drag’ Harlan—eh?”

This was the tall, swarthy man. The malevolence had gone from his eyes, he was grinning broadly, though there was respect of a fawning character in his manner as he stepped out from the group and halted within a few feet of Harlan.

“Me an’ my friends wasn’t none tickled to find that we was goin’ to have a new manager. We was sort of expectin’ Miss Barbara to do the runnin’ herself. But if you say you’re runnin’ things, that makes it a whole lot different. We ain’t buckin’ ‘Drag’ Harlan’s game.”

“Thank you,” grinned Harlan. “I saw you reportin’ to Miss Morgan. You’re straw-boss, I reckon.”

“You’ve hit it. I’m Stroud—Lafe Stroud.”

“You’ll keep on bein’ straw-boss,” said Harlan, shortly. “I’m appointin’ a foreman.”

“Where’s Lawson?”

It was Stroud who spoke. There was a shadow of disappointment in his eyes.

“Lawson won’t be needin’ a title any more,” said Harlan, narrowing his eyes at the other. “He needs plantin’. Soon as we get set some of you boys can go over an’ take care of him. You’ll find him in the harness shop. He busted down the door of Miss Barbara’s room last night, an’ she made a colander out of him.”

Harlan ignored the effect of his news on the men, fixing his gaze on the short man who had spoken first, and who was now standing silent, in an attitude that hinted of dejection.

“You’ll be foreman, Linton,” he stated shortly.

Linton, who had been glumly listening, was so startled by the sudden descent upon his shoulders of the mantle of authority that he straightened with a snap and grabbed wildly at his hat—which dropped from his head despite his effort to clutch it, revealing a mop of fiery red hair. When he straightened, after recovering the hat, his freckled face was crimson with embarrassment and astonishment.

“I’m obliged to you,” he mumbled.

That had ended it. The following morning Linton came to Harlan for orders, and a little later the entire outfit, headed by Stroud, and trailed by the chuck-wagon and the horses of the remuda, started southward to a distant section of the big level, leaving Linton and Harlan at the ranchhouse.

And as the outfit faded into the southern distance, Harlan, walking near the larger of the two bunkhouses, came upon Linton.

Harlan grinned when he saw the other.

“You didn’t go with the outfit, Red?” he said. “Seems a foreman ought to be mighty eager to be with his men on their first trip after he’s appointed.”

Linton’s face was pale, his gaze was direct.

“Look here, Harlan,” he said, steadily. “I’ve knowed you a long time, an’ I know that you’re a damn’ sight straighter than a lot of men which has got reputations better than yourn. But there’s some things want explainin’. I’ve sort of took a shine to that little girl in there. There’s things brewin’ which is goin’ to make it mighty bad for her. It wasn’t so bad while old Morgan was here, but now he’s gone, an’ she’s got to play it a lone hand.

“You git riled an’ sling your gun on me if you want to. I know I wouldn’t have a chance. But just the same, I’m tellin’ you. You know that more’n half that outfit you’ve put me at the head of is Deveny’s men—sneakin’, thievin’, murderin’ outlaws?”

“You wantin’ to quit, Red?” said Harlan, smoothly.

“Quit! Hell’s fire! I’m hangin’ on to the finish. But I’m findin’ out where you stand. What you meanin’ to do with Barbara Morgan?”

Harlan grinned. “I answered that question when I appointed you foreman, Red. But I reckon I made a mistake—I ought to have appointed a man who knows what his think-box is for.”

Linton flushed, and peered intently at the other.

“Meanin’ that you’re backin’ Barbara in this here deal?” he demanded.

“A real thoughtful man would have tumbled to it quicker,” was Harlan’s soft, ironical reply.

For an instant Linton’s gaze was intense with searching, probing inquiry. And Harlan’s steady eyes were agleam with a light that was so quietly honest that it made Linton gasp:

“Damn me! You mean it! You’re playin’ ’em straight, face up. That talk of yourn about Lane Morgan makin’ you manager was straight goods. I know Dolver an’ Laskar an’ the guy they call ‘Chief’ plugged Morgan—for I heard Stroud an’ some more of them talkin’ about it. An’ I heard that you got Dolver an’ Laskar, an’ kept Deveny from grabbin’ off Barbara Morgan, over in Lamo. But I thought you was playin’ for Barbara, too—an’ I wasn’t figurin’ on lettin’ you.”

Harlan laughed lowly.

“Things don’t always shape up the way a man thinks they will, Red. I started for Lamo, figurin’ to salivate Dolver an’ the other guy who killed Davey Langan. I got Dolver at Sentinel Rock, an’ I figured I’d be likely to run into the other guy somewheres—mebbe findin’ him in Deveny’s gang. But runnin’ into Lane Morgan sort of changed the deal. An’ now I’m postponin’ a lot of things until Barbara Morgan is runnin’ free, with no coyotes from the Deveny crowd tryin’ to rope her.”

Linton’s eyes were glowing, he crowded close to Harlan, so close that his body touched Harlan’s, and he stood thus for an instant, breathing fast. Then, noting the unwavering, genial gleam in Harlan’s eyes—a visible sign of Harlan’s knowledge of his deep emotion—Linton seized one of the other’s hands and gripped it tightly.

“Damn your hide,” he said, lowly, “you had me goin’. I’m dead set on seein’ that girl git a square deal, an’ when I saw you makin’ a play for them damned outlaws that are in the outfit, I sure figured there’d be hell a-poppin’ around the Rancho Seco. You sure had me flabbergasted when you named me foreman, for I couldn’t anticipate your trail none.

“But I reckon I’m wised up, now. You’re goin’ to run a whizzer in on ’em—playin’ ’em for suckers. An’ I’m your right-hand man—stickin’ with you until hell runs long on icebergs!”

CHAPTER XIV

SHADOWS

A desire to ride once more in the peaceful sunshine of the land she loved was one of the first indications that Barbara was recovering from the shock occasioned by her father’s death. For two or three days she had not stirred from her room, except to go downstairs to cook her meals. She had spent much of her time sitting at a window nursing her sorrow.

But on this morning she got out of bed feeling more composed than usual, with several new emotions struggling for the mastery. One of those emotions was that of intolerance.

Harlan’s assumption of authority enraged her. He had come to the Rancho Seco with no credentials other than his mere word that her father had forced him to promise to “take hold” of “things.” And she intended, this very morning, to send Harlan away, and to assume control of the ranch herself.

This determination held until after she had breakfasted, and then she stood for a long time in the kitchen door, looking out into the brilliant sunshine, afflicted with a strange indecision.

Harlan had helped to fill the void created by her father’s death—that was certain. There had been something satisfying in his presence at the ranch; it had seemed to mean an assurance for her safety; she had felt almost as fully protected as when her father had been with her. It angered her to see him moving about the place as though he had a perfect right to be there, but at the same time she felt comfortably certain that as long as he was around no harm could come to her.

Her emotions were so contradictory that she could not reach a decision regarding the action she should take and she bit her lips with vexation as she stood in the doorway.

Later, her cheeks a little flushed with the realization that she was surrendering to an emotion that she could not understand—but which, she decided guiltily, her face crimson, had its inception in a conviction that she would regret seeing Harlan ride away, to return no more—she went to the corral, roped her pony, threw saddle and bridle on it, mounted the animal, and rode away—westward.

She had not traveled more than half a mile when she heard the rapid beating of hoofs behind her. Glancing swiftly backward, she saw Purgatory coming, Harlan in the saddle, smoking a cigarette.

Her pulses leaped, unaccountably, and the crimson flush again stained her cheeks; but she sat rigid in the saddle, and looked straight ahead, pretending she had not discovered the presence of horse and rider behind her.

She rode another half mile before the flush died out of her cheeks. And then, responding to a swift indignation, she brought Billy to a halt, wheeled him, and sat motionless in the saddle, her face pale, her eyes flashing.

With apparent unconcern Harlan rode toward her. The big black horse did not change his pace, nor did Harlan change expression. It seemed to the girl that in both horse and rider were a steadfastness of purpose that nothing could change. And despite her indignation, she felt a thrill of admiration for both man and horse.

Yet her eyes were still flashing ominously when Harlan rode to within a dozen paces of her and brought the big black to a halt.

There was an expression of grave respect on Harlan’s face; but she saw a lurking devil in his eyes—a gleam of steady, quizzical humor—that made her yearn to use her quirt on him. For by that gleam she knew he had purposely followed her; that he expected her to be angry with him for doing so. And the gleam also told her that he had determined to bear with her anger.

“Well?” she inquired, icily.

“Good mornin’, ma’am.” He bowed to her, sweeping his broad-brimmed hat from his head with, it seemed to her, an ironical flourish.

“Is there something you want to speak to me about?” she asked, her chin elevated, disdain in her eyes. She assured herself that when he glanced at her as he was doing at this instant, she positively hated him. She wondered why she had tolerated his presence.

“I wasn’t havin’ any thoughts about speakin’ to you, ma’am. Kind of a nice mornin’ for a ride, ain’t it?”

“If one rides alone,” she returned, significantly.

“I enjoy ridin’ a whole lot better when I’ve got company,” he stated, gravely, with equal significance.

“Meaning that you have made up your mind to ride with me, I suppose?” she said coldly.

“You’ve hit it, ma’am.”

“Well,” she declared, her voice quivering with passion; “I don’t want you to ride with me. You came here and usurped whatever power and authority there is; and you are running the Rancho Seco as though it belongs to you. But you shan’t ride with me—I don’t want you to!”

Had she been standing she must have stamped one foot on the ground, so vehement was her manner. And the flashing scorn of her eyes should have been enough to discourage most men.

But not Harlan. His eyelids flickered with some emotion; and his eyes—she noted now, even though she could have killed him for his maddening insistence—were blue, and rimmed by heavy lashes that sun and sand had bleached until the natural brown of them threatened to become a light tan.

She studied him, even while hating him for she saw the force of him—felt it. And though she was thinking spiteful things of him, she found that she was forming a new impression of him—of his character, his appearance, and of the motives that controlled him.

And she thought she knew why men avoided having trouble with him. She told herself that if she were a man and she were facing him with violence in her heart, she would consider seriously before she betrayed it to him. For in his eyes, in the lips, in the thrust of his chin—even in the atmosphere that surrounded him at this instant, was a threat, an unspoken promise, lingering and dormant, of complete readiness—almost eagerness, she was convinced—for violence.

She drew a sharp breath as she watched him. And when she saw his lips curving into a slight smile—wholesome, though grave; with a hint of boyish amusement in them—she got another quick impression of his character, new and startling and illuminating.

For behind the hard, unyielding exterior that he presented to men; back of the promise and the threat of violence, was the impulsiveness and the gentleness that would have ruled him had not the stern necessity of self-preservation forced him to conceal them.

The smile disarmed her. It did seem ludicrous—that she should try to force this man to do anything he did not want to do. And she had known that he would not obey her, and ride back to the ranchhouse; she was convinced that she must either go back or suffer him to follow her as he pleased.

And she was determined not to give up her ride. She was determined to be very haughty about it, though; but when she wheeled Billy, to head him again into the western distance, her eyes twinkled her surrender, and her lips trembled on the verge of a defiant smile.

Then Billy felt the quirt on his flank; he snorted with astonishment and disgust, and charged forward, tossing his head intolerantly.

Looking sidelong, after Billy had traveled two or three hundred yards, Barbara observed that the big black horse was not more than half a dozen steps behind. And curiously, Barbara again experienced that comfortable assurance of protection, and of satisfaction over the nearness of Harlan.

Moved by an entirely unaccountable impulse, she drew the reins slightly on Billy, slowing him, almost imperceptibly, so that both horses had traveled more than a quarter of a mile before the distance between them lessened noticeably.

And then, with an impatience that caused her cheeks to glow, Barbara noted that Purgatory had slowed also, Harlan seemingly accommodating the animal’s pace to her own. It was plain to see that Harlan did not intend to assume that she had relented.

For another quarter of a mile the distance remained the same, and the silence was unbroken except by the rhythmical beating of hoofs through the rustling, matted mesquite.

Then Barbara, yielding to an impulse of righteous anger, brought on by Harlan’s obvious intention to remain at a respectful distance, deliberately brought Billy to a walk and waited until Harlan rode beside her.

“You don’t need to be a brute—even if I did tell you to go back to the ranchhouse!”

“Meanin’ what, ma’am? Why, I don’t remember to have done anything. I was doin’ a heap of thinkin’ just now—if that’s what you mean.”

“Thinking mean things of me—I suppose—for what I said to you.”

He had been thinking of her—seriously. And his thoughts were far from fickle as he watched her now, riding within a few feet of him, her profile toward him, her head having a rigid set, her chin held high, her lips tight-pressed, and her hair drooping in graceful coils over her ears, and bulging in alluring disorder at the nape of her neck.

He was thinking that he had braved, to answer a mere whim, greater dangers than he would be likely to meet in defending her from the wolf-pack which circumstances had set upon her. He was thinking that heretofore his life had been lived without regard to order or system—that he had led a will-o’-the-wisp existence, never knowing that such women as she graced the world. He was thinking of what might have happened to her had not Davey Langan been killed, and if he had not started out to avenge him.

Into his thoughts at this minute flashed a mental picture that paled his face and brought his lips into straight, hard lines—a picture of Barbara at the mercy of Deveny.

With a quick turn he brought Purgatory around in front of Billy, blocking the animal’s further progress westward. The girl started at the rapid movement, and watched him fearfully, dreading—she knew not what.

But his smile—grim and mirthless though it was—partially reassured her, and she sat silent, looking at him as he spoke, rapidly, earnestly.

“I was thinkin’ of you; an’ I wasn’t thinkin’ mean things—about you. I was thinkin’ of Deveny—an’ of what your dad told me over there by Sentinel Rock.

“Your dad told me that you was in danger—that Deveny an’ Strom Rogers an’ some more of them had their eyes turned on you. Your dad made me promise that I’d come here an’ look out for you—an’ I mean to do it. That’s why I went to Lamo when I had no call to go there an’ that’s why I brought Deveny to a show-down in front of you.

“There’s somethin’ goin’ on around here that ain’t showin’ on the surface—somethin’ that’s hidden an’ sneakin’. You heard some of them guys in Lamo gassin’ about the ‘Chief’ bein’ one of the three that sent your dad over the Divide.

“Well, your dad told me that, too—that there was three of them pitched onto him. It was the fellow they call Chief that shot your dad while he was sleepin’—when it was too dark for your dad to see his face. Your dad made me promise to hunt that guy up an’ square things for him. That’s what I’m here for. Anyway, it’s one reason I’m here. The other reason is that I’m goin’ to see that you get a square deal from them guys.

“An’ you won’t get a square deal ridin’ out alone, like this—especially when you head toward Sunset Trail, where Deveny an’ his gang hang out. An’ I’m settin’ down hard on you ridin’ that way. I’m keepin’ you from runnin’ any chances.”

Silently Barbara had watched Harlan’s face while he had been talking. There was no doubt that he was in earnest, and there was likewise no doubt that he was concerned for her safety. But why? It seemed absurd that Harlan, an outlaw himself, should protect her from other outlaws. Yet in Lamo he had done just that.

Behind his actions, his expressed concern for her, must be a motive. What was it? Was it possible that he was doing this thing unselfishly; that the promise her father had exacted from him had changed him; that in his heart at this instant dwelt those finer impulses which must be dormant in all men, however bad?

The light of that great inquiry was in her eyes; they searched his face for subtlety and craft and cunning—for something that would give her a clue to his thoughts. And when she could find in his expression only a grave concern she pulled Billy around and started him back toward the ranchhouse.

They had not ridden more than a hundred yards before she stole a glance at Harlan.

He was now riding beside her, looking straight ahead, his face expressionless. Had he betrayed the slightest sign of triumph she would have changed her mind about going back to the ranchhouse with him.

As it was, she felt a pulse of rage over her readiness in yielding to his orders. Yet the rage was softened by a lurking, stealthy joy she got out of his masterfulness.

“I presume I may ride in another direction—east, for instance—or north, or south?”

He apparently took no notice of the mockery in her voice.

“You’ll not be ridin’ alone, anywhere,” he declared.

“Oh!” she returned, raising her chin and looking at him with a cold scorn that, she thought, would embarrass him; “I am to have a guardian.”

He looked straight back to her, steadily, seemingly unaffected by the hostility of her gaze.

“It amounts to that. But mebbe I wouldn’t put it just that way. Somebody’s got to look out for you—to see that you don’t go to rushin’ into trouble. There was trouble over in Lamo—if you’ll remember.”

And now he smiled gravely at her, and her face reddened over the memory of the incident. She had been eager enough, then, to seek his protection; she had trusted him.

“That wasn’t your fault,” he went on gently. “You didn’t know then, mebbe, just what kind of a guy Deveny is. But you know now, an’ it would be your fault if you run into him again.”

He saw how she took it—how her color came and went, and how her eyes drooped from his. He smiled soberly.

“Looks to me that you’ve got to pin your faith to a mighty small chance, ma’am.”

“What chance?” She looked at him in startled wonderment, for it had not occurred to her that she faced any real danger, despite the threatening attitude of Deveny, and her isolation. For the great, peaceful world, and the swimming sunlight were full of the promise of the triumph of right and virtue; and the sturdy self-reliance of youth was in her heart.

“What chance?” she repeated, watching him keenly.

“The chance that me an’ Red Linton will be able to get things into shape to look out for you.” He was gravely serious.

“It must seem a mighty slim chance to you—me comin’ here with a reputation that ain’t any too good, an’ Linton, with his red head an’ his freckles. Seems like a woman would go all wrong, pinnin’ her faith to red hair an’ freckles an’ a hell-raisin’ outlaw. But there’s been worse combinations, ma’am—if I do say it myself. An’ me an’ Red is figurin’ to come through, no matter what you think of us.”

“Red Linton?” she said. “That is the little, short, red-haired man you put in Lawson’s place, isn’t it? I have never noticed him—particularly. It seems that I have always thought him rather unimportant.”

Harlan grinned. “That’s a trick Red’s got—seemin’ unimportant. Red spends a heap of his time not sayin’ anything, an’ hangin’ around lookin’ like he’s been misplaced. But when there’s any trouble, you’ll find Red like the banty rooster that’s figurin’ to rule the roost.

“I knowed him over in Pardo, ma’am—he rode for the T Down for two or three seasons.”

“You are anticipating trouble—with Deveny?” she asked, a tremor in her voice.

“There ain’t any use of tryin’ to hide it, ma’am. Mebbe your dad thought you’d be better off by him not mentionin’ it to you. But I’ve got a different idea. Anyone—man or woman—knows a heap more about how to go about things if they’re sort of able to anticipate trouble. Your dad told me things was in a mixup over here with Deveny an’ some more of his kind; an’ I ain’t aimin’ to let you go ramblin’ around in the dark.

“About half the Rancho Seco men belong to Deveny’s gang, Linton says. That’s why I put Linton in Lawson’s place; an’ that’s why I’m askin’ you to stick pretty close to the Rancho Seco, an’ requestin’ you not to go rummagin’ around the country.”

She rode on silently, her face pale, digesting this disquieting news. She remembered now that her father had seemed rather worried at times, and that upon several occasions he had hinted that he was distrustful of some of the Rancho Seco men. But as Harlan had said, he had never taken her completely into his confidence—no doubt because he had not wanted her to worry. That was very like her father—always making life easy for her.

However, covertly watching Harlan, she was conscious of an emotion that the latter did not suspect. The emotion was confidence—not in Harlan, for, though she had seen that he, apparently, was eager to become her champion, she could not forget that he, too, was an outlaw, with no proof that he had been sent to the Rancho Seco by her father; with nothing but his actions to convince her that his motives were founded upon consideration for her welfare.

She thought of John Haydon as she rode beside Harlan; and it was confidence in him that was expressed in her glances at Harlan; she was convinced that she did not have to depend entirely upon Harlan. And when, as they neared the ranchhouse, and she saw a big gray horse standing near the entrance to the patio, her face reddened and her eyes grew brilliant with a light that drew a cold smile to Harlan’s face.

“That will be John Haydon’s horse, I reckon,” he said slowly.

“Why,” she returned, startled; “how did you know?”

He rode on, not replying. When they reached the ranchhouse, Harlan loped Purgatory toward one of the bunkhouses, in front of which he saw Red Linton standing. Barbara directed Billy to the patio entrance, and dismounted, her face flushed, to meet a man who came out of the open gateway to greet her, his face wreathed in a delighted smile.

CHAPTER XV

LINKED

“So you came at last?”

Barbara had some difficulty in keeping resentment prominent in her voice as she faced John Haydon, for other emotions were clamoring within her—joy because Haydon had come, even though tardily; self-reproach because she saw in Haydon’s eyes a glowing anxiety and sympathy that looked as though they were of recent birth.

There was repressed excitement in Haydon’s manner; it was as though he had only just heard of the girl’s affliction and had ridden hard to come to her.

She was sure of the sincerity in his voice when he grasped her hands tightly and said:

“At last, Barbara! I heard it only this morning, and I have nearly killed my horse getting over here! Look at him!”

The gray horse certainly did have the appearance of having been ridden hard. He stood, his legs braced, his head drooping, his muzzle and chest flecked with foam. Barbara murmured pityingly as she stroked the beast’s neck; and there was quick forgiveness in her eyes when she again looked at Haydon.

Haydon was big—fully as tall as Harlan, and broader. His shoulders bulged the blue flannel shirt he wore; and it was drawn into folds at his slim waist, where a cartridge-studded belt encircled him, sagging at the right hip with the weight of a heavy pistol.

He wore a plain gray silk handkerchief at his throat; it sagged at the front, revealing a muscular development that had excited the envious admiration of men. His hair was coal-black, wavy and abundant—though he wore it short—with design, it seemed, for he must have known that it gave him an alert, virile appearance.