'Drag' Harlan by Charles Alden Seltzer (top novels of all time .txt) 📖

Barbara Morgan had not been able to sleep except by fits and starts. A dozen times during the night she had caught herself on the verge of sinking into deep slumber, and each time she had got up and washed her eyes with some water from a pitcher on the bureau, determined that she would not take any chances of permitting Deveny to surprise her.

When the dawn came she was haggard and tired; and she got up listlessly, combed her hair, and washed her face, and dragged away the pieces of furniture that had formed the barricade at the door.

She felt more secure with the dawn, and when the sunlight began to stream into the east windows she opened the door of the room, descended the stairs, and took a short walk to the edge of town.

Returning, she saw a man arrayed in overalls, boots, a blue woolen shirt, and broad felt hat, standing in the doorway of the stable that, she felt, belonged to the Eating-House. Sight of the stable brought to her thoughts of her horse—Billy—and she decided to determine if the man who had taken charge of him had put him into the stable.

She paused before the door, directly in front of the man, who did not move aside to permit her to enter.

She thought at first that he was not aware of her desire—until she observed an amused light in his eyes; and then she knew that he was purposely barring her way.

“This is the Eating-House stable, I suppose?” she inquired quietly.

“You’re supposin’ is a heap correct, ma’am,” grinned the man.

“Well,” she said, “if you will kindly step aside I shall see if my horse is all right.”

“Your horse is all right, ma’am,” returned the man. “I’ve just fed him.”

Irritated by his attitude, she spoke sharply:

“Step aside, please; I am going into the stable!”

The man grinned widely. “It’s ag’in’ orders, ma’am; you’ll have to stay out.”

“Whose orders?”

“Deveny’s. You ain’t to go into the stable.”

She hesitated, afflicted with a queer sensation of weakness and indecision.

It was her fear of Deveny, she supposed, that made her feel that way, together with the conviction that Deveny must have known that she had been in the room next to the one he had taken, even before he had ascended the stairs. It seemed to her that this deliberate interference with her must be inspired by evil intentions, and for an instant panic overtook her.

Then, yielding to the flash of anger that surged over her, she drew the small revolver she always carried with her on her rides, and presented it. She stepped back a little, so that the man might not strike the weapon from her hand, and spoke shortly, commandingly to him.

“Get away from that door!”

“Shootin’, ma’am?” he drawled. “Oh, don’t!”

He grinned at her and calmly began to roll a cigarette, at which action she gulped with dismay, wheeled swiftly, and walked to the stairs. She went up proudly enough, her head held high, for she divined that the man would be watching her. But when she entered her room her pride forsook her, and she sank into a chair by the east window, dismayed and frightened.

While she sat there the slatternly woman slowly opened the door and stuck her head in. She grinned widely at Barbara.

“Goin’ ridin’ this mawnin’, deary?”

Barbara looked at her, saw the mockery in the jealous eyes, and turned her head again, making no reply.

“Too stuck up to talk, eh?” jibed the slattern. “Well, before you get out of here you’ll be tickled enough to shoot off your gab. Bah! You an’ your airs! If you want any grub this mawnin’ you’ll come down an’ grab it yourself, I’m tellin’ you that.”

She slammed the door, her jeering laugh penetrating the partition with hideous resonance.

After the woman had gone Barbara got up, her lips set in resolute lines.

Once in the hall she started to walk toward the stairs, when she saw the cowboy of the stable lounging against the rail on the platform. He saw her at the instant she looked at him, and he grinned hugely.

“I reckon you’ve noticed I’ve sort of shifted,” he said. “I keep goin’ up—gettin’ higher in the world.”

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Just loafin’, I reckon,” grinned the other. “An’ obeyin’ orders,” he added instantly. “Much as I hate to disconvenience a lady, I ain’t takin’ no chances on rilin’ Deveny.”

“Do you mean that Deveny placed you here to watch me?”

“He didn’t issue no particular orders as to where I was to do my standin’. But he was sure earnest about sayin’ that you wasn’t to leave your room.”

“I left it once this morning.”

“My fault,” he grinned. “I was sneakin’ a drink in the Antler, an’ you slipped me. I’m bettin’ it don’t happen ag’in!”

Overcome with a cold terror that suddenly seized her, Barbara wheeled and re-entered her room, standing for an instant at the door as she locked it, and then walking to the chair and sinking nervelessly into it.

Somehow, she sensed the futility of further effort at escape. She was aware of Deveny’s power in the country; she knew that he ruled Lamo as he ruled every foot of land in the section; and she was convinced that it would be wasted effort to call for help. Even her own sex—represented by the slattern, and most of the women in Lamo were of that type, in character—seemed to be antagonistic toward her. It seemed to her that they would mock her as the slattern had mocked her, should she appeal to them.

And as for the men of Lamo, they were not to be considered. She was certain she could not induce one of them to act contrary to Deveny’s wishes. For her father had told her about Lamo’s men—how they were slaves to the will of the man whose deeds of outlawry had made him feared wherever men congregated; and she knew Lamo itself was a sink-hole of iniquity where women were swallowed by the evil passions of men.

She might have appealed to Gage, the sheriff, and she thought of Gage while she sat at the window. But Gage, her father had told her, with disgust in his eyes, was a man of colorless personality and of little courage—a negligible character upon whom the good people of the section, who were pitifully few, could not depend. Her father had told her that it was his opinion that Gage, too, was a slave to Deveny’s will.

She wished now that she had not yielded to the impulse which had brought her to Lamo; but her lips grew firm and her eyes defiant as she at last got up and walked to one of the front windows.

Now, more vividly than ever, could she understand the significance of Deveny’s glances at her in the past; the light in his eyes had been an expression of premeditated evil, awaiting an opportunity.

She was pale, and her hands were trembling as she placed them on the sill of the front window and glanced down into the street, hoping that she might see a friendly face; praying that one of the Rancho Seco men might have come to town during the night.

But she saw no one she knew. Indeed, except for a pony standing in front of a saloon down the street a little distance, and several others hitched to a rail across the street, in front of the First Chance saloon, Lamo seemed to be deserted. And a silence, deep and portentous of evil, seemed to have settled over the town.

But as she leaned upon the sill a sound floated to her through the open window—a man’s voice, so close to her that it made her start and stiffen. It was Deveny’s voice, and it seemed to come from a point in the street directly beneath the window.

“Did you find Gage?” it said.

Barbara leaned forward a little and looked downward. Below her, on the narrow board-walk that ran in front of the Eating-House, were four men. She recognized three of them—Deveny, Strom Rogers, and Meeder Lawson, the Rancho Seco foreman.

The other man was a stranger. Evidently it was the stranger to whom Deveny had spoken, for it was the stranger who answered.

“He’s in his office now.”

Deveny turned to Lawson and Rogers. “You two wait here, Laskar and myself will do the talking to Gage.” He started away with the man who had answered him; then called back over his shoulder: “Hang around; if there’s trouble, you’ll want to get in on it.”

Deveny and Laskar walked down the street; the girl saw them enter the building occupied by the sheriff.

Wondering, intensely curious—for that word “trouble” meant shooting in the vocabulary of men of the Deveny type—Barbara drew back until she was certain the men in the street could not see her.

When Deveny and Laskar disappeared, Strom Rogers laughed sneeringly:

“Deveny’s scared of ‘Drag’ Harlan, I reckon. It’s a cheap frame-up.”

“Aw, hell,” jibed the other; “you’re jealous, that’s all. You’d like to see Harlan plug Deveny, eh; so’s you’d have a chance with Barbara Morgan. I’d be a heap careful, if I was you, Rogers. Deveny knows you took a shine to Barbara Morgan. I seen him lookin’ hostile at you when you was quizzin’ him in Balleau’s. He’s next.”

“This is a free country,” returned Rogers. The girl caught the malignant note in his voice, and she leaned outward a little, trying to see his face, while she shivered with dread.

“Yes,” laughed Lawson; “a man can cash in without any excuse, usual; all he’s got to do is to cross Deveny. You’re a damned fool, Strom, to go to takin’ a shine to Barbara Morgan, when Deveny wants her. He’s been waitin’ for her, an’ meanin’ to have her, all along. He’s only been waitin’ until ol’ Morgan cashed in, so’s he’d have a chance to take her. Now that Morgan’s dead his chance has come.”

Silently, her face dead white, her eyes closed, Barbara slipped backward and crumpled into a heap on the dirty carpet of the room.

When she again opened her eyes it was to look wildly at the open window through which the terrible news had come. Then she dragged herself to it, and making no sound leaned her arms on the sill and listened again, her heart seeming to be in the clutch of icy fingers, her brain atrophied, reeling in a chaos of incoherent, agonized impulses.

She did not know how long she had been unconscious. She saw that Rogers and Lawson were still below, and still talking. So keen was her sense of hearing—every nerve straining in the effort to learn more—that the voices of the men came in through the window with a resonance