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.
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