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 a
t 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 saff
ron 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.
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