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 feel
ing 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 st
epped 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.
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