The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack

by Charles Alden Seltzer

  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 cursin
g 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!”