“They got him.”
Then she looked up, to see Deveny grinning at her.
“I reckon that’s all,” he said. “We’re headin’ for the Cache—my hang-out. If you’d have been good over in Lamo, the day that damned Harlan came, this wouldn’t have happened. I’d sent for a parson, an’ I intended to give you a square deal. But now it’s different. Then I was scared of running foul of Haydon—I didn’t want to make trouble. But I’m running my own game now—Haydon and me have agreed to call it quits. Me not liking the idea of Haydon adopting Harlan.”
She stared up at him, her eyes widening.
“You and Haydon were—what do you mean?” she asked, her heart seeming to be a dead weight in her breast, heavy with suspicion over the dread significance in his voice and words. She watched him, breathlessly.
“I’m meaning that Haydon and me were running things in the valley—that we were partners, splitting equal. But I’m playing a lone hand now.”
He seemed to enjoy her astonishment—the light in her eyes which showed that comprehension, freighted with hopelessness, was stealing over her.
He grinned hugely as he watched her face.
“Haydon is the guy we called ‘Chief,’” he said, enjoying her further amazement and noting the sudden paleness that swept over her face. “He’s the guy who killed your father at Sentinel Rock. He was after you, meaning to make a fool of you. Hurts—does it?” he jeered, when he saw her eyes glow with a rage that he could understand. “I’ve heard of that chain deal—Haydon was telling me. When he shot your father he lost a bit of chain. Harlan found it and gave it back to him, with you looking on. I reckon that’s why him and Harlan hit it off together so well—Harlan knowing he killed your father and not telling you about it.”
The long shudder that shook the girl betrayed something of the terrible emotion under which she was laboring; and when she finally opened her eyes to gaze again into Deveny’s, they were filled with a haunting hopelessness—a complete surrender to the sinister circumstances which seemed to have surrounded her from the beginning.