'Drag' Harlan Part 10

"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 s.h.i.+ne 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sionate, 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 sc.u.m 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 brus.h.i.+ng the b.u.t.t 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!"

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 had no 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, flas.h.i.+ng 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 once seen 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 pa.s.sion, 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 I _did_ have 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 antic.i.p.ation 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.

"Higgins _was_ watching 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.