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

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!”

He