“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.”