CHAPTER VIISINGLE-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 thesheriff’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, upturnedface. 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 fatherdead!”
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 nothingabout 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 tellingthem 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 hadno 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 onceseen 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 Ididhave 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.
“Higginswaswatching 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’ itmyway. 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 VIIIBARBARA 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 reasonableto 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 toinquire 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 sheknew, 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 mentionthe 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 hehad 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 madethenthat 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 thathad 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 IXAN 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 ofgauze. 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 anarrow 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 sunsetsan’sunsets,” he said. “They tellme 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’ shewon’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 justwhat 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.”